radicle-heartwood-lfs/radicle-cli/examples/rad-node.md

The radicle node is our daemon friend that is running as a background process. It allows us to interact with the network as well as storing some key data that we may be interested in.

🚧 `rad node start` is under construction 🚧

If the node is not running we can start it by using the `rad node start` command:

We can confirm the status of the node at any time by using the rad node status command (or just rad node for short):

$ rad node status
✓ The node is running

The node also allows us to connect with other nodes in the network. For example, let's connect to a known peer using their Node ID and their network address:

$ rad node connect z6Mkt67GdsW7715MEfRuP4pSZxJRJh6kj6Y48WRqVv4N1tRk@0.0.0.0:3679
✓ Connecting to z6Mkt67…v4N1tRk@0.0.0.0:3679...

The node also allows us to query data that it has access too such as the tracking relationships and the routing table. Before we explore those commands we'll first track a peer so that we have something to see.

$ rad track did:key:z6Mkt67GdsW7715MEfRuP4pSZxJRJh6kj6Y48WRqVv4N1tRk --alias Bob
✓ Tracking policy updated for z6Mkt67GdsW7715MEfRuP4pSZxJRJh6kj6Y48WRqVv4N1tRk (Bob)

Now, when we use the rad node tracking command we will see information for repositories that we track -- in this case a repository that was already created:

$ rad node tracking
╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ RID                                 Scope     Policy │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ rad:z42hL2jL4XNk6K8oHQaSWfMgCL7ji   trusted   track  │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

This is the same as using the --repos flag, but if we wish to see which nodes we are specifically tracking, then we use the --nodes flag:

$ rad node tracking --nodes
╭───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ DID                                                        Alias   Policy │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ did:key:z6Mkt67GdsW7715MEfRuP4pSZxJRJh6kj6Y48WRqVv4N1tRk   Bob     track  │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

To see the routing table we can use the rad node routing command and see what Repository IDs match up with the interests of which Node IDs. In this case, it is just our own Node ID for the project we created.

$ rad node routing
╭─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ RID                                 NID             │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ rad:z42hL2jL4XNk6K8oHQaSWfMgCL7ji   z6MknSL…StBU8Vi │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

🚧 `rad node stop` is under construction 🚧

Finally, if we want to stop the daemon process from running we can issue the `rad node stop` command: