Decode macaroon from hex string and write to file that can be parsed by lncli.

decode-macaroon.md

Decoding macaroon strings

Macaroons generated from the $ lncli bakemacaroon method are output as hex-encoded strings by default. To decode these to a binary file for easy usage with lncli these are a few options included here for bash and python.

The output file from these can be passed to the --macaroonpath flag directly when using $ lncli.

macaroon-decode.py

# Sample from https://guggero.github.io/cryptography-toolkit/#!/macaroon
sample_macaroon_hex = '02011568747470733a2f2f736f6d652e6c6f636174696f6e020f64656d6f2d6964656e74696669657200020e6970203d203132372e302e302e310000062003e21abfd35932875cb2dee4d619b1d38abbc4825839be09799908b542fcc91f'

out_file = 'my-custom.macaroon'

macaroon_bytes = bytes.fromhex(sample_macaroon_hex)
with open(out_file, 'wb') as f:
    f.write(macaroon_bytes)

macaroon-decode.sh

#!/bin/bash

# For hex
# Sample from https://guggero.github.io/cryptography-toolkit/#!/macaroon
SAMPLE_MACAROON_HEX="02011568747470733a2f2f736f6d652e6c6f636174696f6e020f64656d6f2d6964656e74696669657200020e6970203d203132372e302e302e310000062003e21abfd35932875cb2dee4d619b1d38abbc4825839be09799908b542fcc91f"
OUT_FILE="my-custom.macaroon"

echo $SAMPLE_MACAROON_HEX \
  | xxd -r -p - \
  > $OUT_FILE


# =========================

# For base64
SAMPLE_MACAROON_B64="AgEDbG5kAvgBAwoQYRN7k+zmnr+6tsZM76sgIRIBMBoWCgdhZGRyZXNzEgRyZWFkEgV3cml0ZRoTCgRpbmZvEgRyZWFkEgV3cml0ZRoXCghpbnZvaWNlcxIEcmVhZBIFd3JpdGUaIQoIbWFjYXJvb24SCGdlbmVyYXRlEgRyZWFkEgV3cml0ZRoWCgdtZXNzYWdlEgRyZWFkEgV3cml0ZRoXCghvZmZjaGFpbhIEcmVhZBIFd3JpdGUaFgoHb25jaGFpbhIEcmVhZBIFd3JpdGUaFAoFcGVlcnMSBHJlYWQSBXdyaXRlGhgKBnNpZ25lchIIZ2VuZXJhdGUSBHJlYWQAAAYgyrArezmYYqcv6AZ4ZqUe4p0C3P8W1rF+L9qF9sEwx6g="
OUT_FILE="my-custom.macaroon"

echo $SAMPLE_MACAROON_B64 \
  | base64 -d \
  > $OUT_FILE

macaroon-encode.sh

#!/bin/bash

MACAROON_FILE="admin.macaroon"

# Hex: Can copy the output of the below command
xxd -p $MACAROON_FILE

# Base64: Can copy the output of the below command
base64 $MACAROON_FILE | tr -d '\n\r'