Testing

Test Environment

ord env <DIRECTORY> creates a test environment in <DIRECTORY>, spins up bitcoind and ord server instances, prints example commands for interacting with the test bitcoind and ord server instances, waits for CTRL-C, and then shuts down bitcoind and ord server.

ord env tries to use port 9000 for bitcoind's RPC interface, and port 9001 for ord's RPC interface, but will fall back to random unused ports.

Inside of the env directory, ord env will write bitcoind's configuration to bitcoin.conf, ord's configuration to ord.yaml, and the env configuration to env.json.

env.json contains the commands needed to invoke bitcoin-cli and ord wallet, as well as the ports bitcoind and ord server are listening on.

These can be extracted into shell commands using jq:

bitcoin=`jq -r '.bitcoin_cli_command | join(" ")' env/env.json`
$bitcoin listunspent

ord=`jq -r '.ord_wallet_command | join(" ")' env/env.json`
$ord outputs

If ord is in the $PATH and the env directory is env, the bitcoin-cli command will be:

bitcoin-cli -datadir=env

And the ord will be:

ord --datadir env

Test Networks

Ord can be tested using the following flags to specify the test network. For more information on running Bitcoin Core for testing, see Bitcoin's developer documentation.

Most ord commands in wallet and explorer can be run with the following network flags:

Regtest doesn't require downloading the blockchain since you create your own private blockchain, so indexing ord is almost instantaneous.

Example

Run bitcoind in regtest with:

bitcoind -regtest -txindex

Run ord server in regtest with:

ord --regtest server

Create a wallet in regtest with:

ord --regtest wallet create

Get a regtest receive address with:

ord --regtest wallet receive

Mine 101 blocks (to unlock the coinbase) with:

bitcoin-cli -regtest generatetoaddress 101 <receive address>

Inscribe in regtest with:

ord --regtest wallet inscribe --fee-rate 1 --file <file>

Mine the inscription with:

bitcoin-cli -regtest generatetoaddress 1 <receive address>

By default, browsers don't support compression over HTTP. To test compressed content over HTTP, use the --decompress flag:

ord --regtest server --decompress

Testing Recursion

When testing out recursion, inscribe the dependencies first (example with p5.js):

ord --regtest wallet inscribe --fee-rate 1 --file p5.js

This will return the inscription ID of the dependency which you can then reference in your inscription.

However, inscription IDs differ between mainnet and test chains, so you must change the inscription IDs in your inscription to the mainnet inscription IDs of your dependencies before making the final inscription on mainnet.

Then you can inscribe your recursive inscription with:

ord --regtest wallet inscribe --fee-rate 1 --file recursive-inscription.html

Finally you will have to mine some blocks and start the server:

bitcoin-cli generatetoaddress 6 <receive address>

Mainnet Dependencies

To avoid having to change dependency inscription IDs to mainnet inscription IDs, you may utilize a content proxy when testing. ord server accepts a --proxy option, which takes the URL of a another ord server instance. When making a request to /content/<INSCRIPTION_ID> when a content proxy is set and the inscription is not found, ord server will forward the request to the content proxy. This allows you to run a test ord server instance with a mainnet content proxy. You can then use mainnet inscription IDs in your test inscription, which will then return the content of the mainnet inscriptions.

ord --regtest server --proxy https://ordinals.com