Lithic Node API Library

The Lithic Node library provides convenient access to the Lithic REST API from applications written in server-side JavaScript. It includes TypeScript definitions for all request params and response fields.

Installation

npm install --save lithic
# or
yarn add lithic

Usage

import Lithic from 'lithic';

const lithic = new Lithic(process.env.LITHIC_API_KEY, {
  environment: 'sandbox', // or 'production'
});

async function main() {
  const card = await lithic.cards.create({
    type: 'SINGLE_USE',
  });

  console.log(card.token);
}
main();

Usage with TypeScript

Importing, instantiating, and interacting with the library are the same as above. If you like, you may reference our types directly:

import Lithic from 'lithic';

const lithic = new Lithic(process.env.LITHIC_API_KEY, {
  environment: 'sandbox', // or 'production'
});

async function main() {
  const params: Lithic.CardCreateParams = { type: 'SINGLE_USE' };

  const card: Lithic.Card = await lithic.cards.create(params);
}
main();

Documentation for each method, request param, and response field are available in docstrings and will appear on hover in most modern editors.

Handling errors

When the library is unable to connect to the API, or if the API returns a non-success status code (i.e., 4xx or 5xx response), a subclass of APIError will be thrown:

async function main() {
  const card = await lithic.cards.create({ type: 'an_incorrect_type' }).catch((err) => {
    if (err instanceof Lithic.APIError) {
      console.log(err.status); // 400
      console.log(err.name); // BadRequestError
      console.log(err.error?.message); // Invalid parameter(s): type
      console.log(err.error?.debugging_request_id); // 94d5e915-xxxx-4cee-a4f5-2xd6ebd279ac
      console.log(err.headers); // {server: 'nginx', ...}
    }
  });
}
main();

Error codes are as followed:

Status Code	Error Type
400	`BadRequestError`
401	`AuthenticationError`
403	`PermissionDeniedError`
404	`NotFoundError`
422	`UnprocessableEntityError`
429	`RateLimitError`
>=500	`InternalServerError`
N/A	`APIConnectionError`

Retries

Certain errors will be automatically retried 2 times by default, with a short exponential backoff. Connection errors (for example, due to a network connectivity problem), 409 Conflict, 429 Rate Limit, and >=500 Internal errors will all be retried by default.

You can use the maxRetries option to configure or disable this:

// Configure the default for all requests:
const lithic = new Lithic(process.env.LITHIC_API_KEY, {
  maxRetries: 0, // default is 2
});

// Or, configure per-request:
lithic.cards.list({ page_size: 10 }, {
  maxRetries: 5
});

Timeouts

Requests time out after 60 seconds by default. You can configure this with a timeout option:

// Configure the default for all requests:
const lithic = new Lithic(process.env.LITHIC_API_KEY, {
  timeout: 20 * 1000, // 20 seconds (default is 60s)
});

// Override per-request:
lithic.cards.list({ page_size: 10 }, {
  timeout: 5 * 1000
});

On timeout, an APIConnectionTimeoutError is thrown.

Note that requests which time out will be retried twice by default.

Auto-pagination

List methods in the Lithic API are paginated. Use for await … of syntax to iterate through items across all pages.

async function fetchAllCards(params) {
  const allCards = [];
  // Automatically fetches more pages as needed.
  for await (const card of lithic.cards.list()) {
    allCards.push(card);
  }
  return allCards;
}

Configuring an HTTP(S) Agent (e.g., for proxies)

By default, this library uses a stable agent for all http/https requests to reuse TCP connections, eliminating many TCP & TLS handshakes and shaving around 100ms off most requests.

If you would like to disable or customize this behavior, for example to use the API behind a proxy, you can pass an httpAgent which is used for all requests (be they http or https), for example:

import http from 'http';
import HttpsProxyAgent from 'https-proxy-agent';

// Configure the default for all requests:
const lithic = new Lithic(process.env.LITHIC_API_KEY, {
  httpAgent: new HttpsProxyAgent(process.env.PROXY_URL),
});

// Override per-request:
lithic.cards.list({}, {
  baseURL: 'http://localhost:8080/test-api',
  httpAgent: new http.Agent({ keepAlive: false })
})

Status

This package is in beta. Its internals and interfaces are not stable and subject to change without a major semver bump; please reach out if you rely on any undocumented behavior.

We are keen for your feedback; please email us at sdk-feedback@lithic.com or open an issue with questions, bugs, or suggestions.

Requirements

Node.js version 12 or higher.

If you are interested in other runtime environments, please open or upvote an issue on Github.

RobertCraigie / lithic-node