I agree, this would be a good feature to implement. I don't think there are any downsides to renaming a node. It would just need to update the value stored in the network and restart the node in order for the alias to be updated.

Thanks for the feedback.

Would be totally awesome to be able to name nodes. This would make also for a more realistic representation when discussing and brainstorming on the topology things might result in in actual production.

hi, @jamaljsr I wanted to know if this is still okay to work on. Not sure i can handle it but I would definitely love to try.

Thanks for asking. Yes, you can work on it. I am not aware of anyone currently implementing this feature.

I will try to work on this.

I just looked into the Redux store and highlighted the value or key that will need to be changed when the user change the node name. Just to confirm with you, am I missing something?

Hey @umarluqman, thanks for taking a shot at this feature.

The data in the store that you found are actually all derived from the node names in the network object. This is the primary source for the name.

Once this name is changed, the lightning store will automatically begin using the new name when it fetches data from the node's APIs. However, it may be cleaner to rename the keys in there to avoid needing to refetch data again.

The data in the designer store couple possibly be regenerated using the functions in chart.ts but I'm not 100% certain. You may need to create a new function to specifically do the rename.

The biggest challenge I can think of is handling the renaming of the node directory that's stored on the host machine's file system, like ~/.polar/networks/1/volumes/lnd/alice/. The node must be stopped in order to rename this dir. It may be simpler to just require the whole network to be stopped in order to rename a node so you don't have to deal with processes holding files open, which would prevent renaming the parent dir.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks for the explanation, I have two things in mind.

1. If we were stopping the whole network probably we can have a button - Rename Node, then when the user click it, it will show a confirmation modal as for the network will be stop for the nodes to be renamed. If use click Yes, then the network will be stopped, all the node name text will become an input with the existing node name as the value and also beside the Rename Node button, there will be two more buttons - X and ✓ button.

After the user rename the node, they can click the ✓ button and X to cancel renaming the node. Probably there's better UX for this, I'm just putting it out here.

2. Secondly, I was thinking if we could have name node configure during the node creation setup. This one is simpler I guess. This is the proposed design.

We can have a plus icon button, to insert multiple node names instead of specifying the node count. there will be a placeholder - Node name in the inputs for better UX

Hey @umarluqman are you still working on this? I'd like to take it on in case you're not.

Hey @jamaljsr I'd like to handle this if that's okay

Go for it 👍

Hey @jamaljsr I would appreciate some help. I wrote a rename function to update the network store which updates the name of the node as below "Alic"

However, the designer store doesn't seem to update with this information as it remains 'alice'

The syncChart function in the designer store doesn't seem to do the update and I am not sure whether i should be using the updateChartFromNodes method from chart.ts

Hey @Jem256, yes you will have to implement an function in the designer store to rename the node in it's state as well. Take a look at how removeLightningNode is implemented. It removes the node from the network store, then calls getStoreActions().designer.removeNode(node.name);.

Hey @jamaljsr I would like some clarification on how the onPortPositionChange function in the designer is receiving its props because I am encountering this error when i leave the network view screen and return to it after a rename

the network object also has this error that I am having difficulty in tracing. This also affects the retrieval of the node info.

Hey @Jem256, can you push the code that exhibits this behavior so I can reproduce it and investigate.