geth: shh_newIdentity does not exists/is not available

Question

I'm trying out whispers with web3 and geth on a private testnet. I'm just running the following code taken from Ethereum Whisper wiki.

function sendWhisper() {
    var shh = web3.shh;
    var appName = "My silly app!";
    var myName = "Gav Would";
    var myIdentity = shh.newIdentity();
}

However, I'm getting this problem:

app.js:5318 Uncaught Error: The method shh_newIdentity does not exist/is not available

I'm having a wild guess that there is something wrong with geth. According to this issue the JSON RPC shh_newIdentity, should have been implemented already. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You will have to start geth with the --shh parameter.

user@Kumquat:~$ geth help | grep shh
--shh      Enable Whisper

Without the --shh parameter:

user@Kumquat:/tmp$ geth --datadir test console
...
>   var shh = web3.shh;
undefined
>   var appName = "My silly app!";
undefined
>   var myName = "Gav Would";
undefined
>   var myIdentity = shh.newIdentity();
The method shh_newIdentity does not exist/is not available
    at web3.js:3119:20
    at web3.js:6023:15
    at web3.js:4995:36
    at <anonymous>:1:20

With the --shh parameter:

user@Kumquat:/tmp$ geth --datadir test --shh console
>   var shh = web3.shh;
undefined
>   var appName = "My silly app!";
undefined
>   var myName = "Gav Would";
undefined
>   var myIdentity = shh.newIdentity();
undefined

Answer 2

In geth you need to specify the flags --shh and --rpcapi "db,eth,net,web3,shh"