# Delta Chat RPC server

This program provides a [JSON-RPC 2.0](https://www.jsonrpc.org/specification) interface to DeltaChat
over standard I/O or UNIX sockets.

## Install

To download binary pre-builds check the [releases page](https://github.com/chatmail/core/releases).
Rename the downloaded binary to `deltachat-rpc-server` and add it to your `PATH`.

To install from source run:

```sh
cargo install --git https://github.com/chatmail/core/ deltachat-rpc-server
```

The `deltachat-rpc-server` executable will be installed into `$HOME/.cargo/bin` that should be available
in your `PATH`.

## Usage

To use just run `deltachat-rpc-server` command. The accounts folder will be created in the current
working directory unless `DC_ACCOUNTS_PATH` is set:

```sh
export DC_ACCOUNTS_PATH=$HOME/delta/
deltachat-rpc-server
```

The common use case for this program is to create bindings to use Delta Chat core from programming
languages other than Rust, for example:

1. Python: https://pypi.org/project/deltachat-rpc-client/
2. Go: https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-rpc-client-go/

Run `deltachat-rpc-server --version` to check the version of the server.
Run `deltachat-rpc-server --openrpc` to get [OpenRPC](https://open-rpc.org/) specification of the provided JSON-RPC API.

### Usage over unix sockets

> At this time this does not work on windows because rust does not support unix sockets on windows, yet (<https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/150487>).

Standard I/O is the default option, but you can also tell `deltachat-rpc-server` to use a unix socket instead.

```
RUST_LOG=info deltachat-rpc-server --unix ./chatmail-core.sock
```

While this technically allows multiple processes to communicate with the same rpc server instance,
please note that there is still only event queue, so only one of these processed should read the events at a time.

You can test it with socat:
```sh
socat - UNIX-CONNECT:./chatmail-core.sock
```
Then paste the following jsonrpc command and press enter:
```json
{"method": "get_system_info","id": 1,"params": []}
```