BitcoinTalk

[PATCH] implement 'xlisttransactions'

BitcoinTalk
#1
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
[PATCH] implement 'xlisttransactions'
Date:
Here is a patch against SVN 117, implementing 'xlisttransactions' RPC: http://pastebin.ca/1910553   At present, the options are ignored, and it dumps all transactions it finds.

Raw patch: http://pastebin.ca/raw/1910553

Edit: Patch's current home is http://yyz.us/bitcoin/patch.bitcoin-listtransactions

Edit2: RPC command has been renamed to 'xlisttransactions'

BitcoinTalk
#2
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:

Here's an updated version, that sorts by number of confirmations:  http://pastebin.ca/1910564

Raw patch:  http://pastebin.ca/raw/1910564

BitcoinTalk
#3
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:

OK, here's version 4.  Output now matches what you see in the UI, and gives you information on debits/credit/generated/etc.  The 'count' and 'includegenerated' parameters are now honored.

Patch: http://pastebin.ca/1910623
Raw patch: http://pastebin.ca/raw/1910623

Here's sample output from my dev box:
Code:
$ /usr/local/src/bitcoin/bitcoind -datadir=/usr/local/bitcoin/data listtransactions
[
    {
        "address" : "15uyjNbNzizz5r8UgWpF1ZayV82Pq3FHQ5",
        "label" : "",
        "class" : "credit",
        "amount" : 0.02000000000000000,
        "confirmations" : 160
    },
    {
        "address" : "15uyjNbNzizz5r8UgWpF1ZayV82Pq3FHQ5",
        "label" : "",
        "class" : "credit",
        "amount" : 0.01000000000000000,
        "confirmations" : 162
    },
    {
        "address" : "1GKgKYtV79jYHR2mr1SSDp9EjXQuLTmUTw",
        "label" : "",
        "class" : "debit",
        "amount" : 0.02000000000000000,
        "confirmations" : 1525
    },
    {
        "address" : "191ALqREPdXCGE6mhfS7HqRZCeQB2AHT6y",
        "label" : "",
        "class" : "credit",
        "amount" : 0.02000000000000000,
        "confirmations" : 1531
    },
    {
        "address" : "1HVYQQ5K489fMx5Aqt48M5oTJPsmUhrpkx",
        "label" : "",
        "class" : "debit",
        "amount" : 0.01000000000000000,
        "confirmations" : 1572
    },
    {
        "address" : "1KTpPjGWyhTBC5NNYFwNzkyjW6UDL9jKPG",
        "label" : "Your Address",
        "class" : "credit",
        "amount" : 0.01000000000000000,
        "confirmations" : 1587
    }
]
BitcoinTalk
#4
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:

Added a couple small cleanups, and verified it still works under 0.3.6 / SVN r119.

Version 5 of listtransactions: http://pastebin.ca/1911295
Raw patch: http://pastebin.ca/raw/1911295


FAQ:

Q1) How does 'listtransactions' behave if tail of the block chain changes, eg. 0 confirmations -> 1 confirmation -> 0 confirmations?

A1) 'listtransactions' behaves the same way 'listreceivedbyaddress' behaves...  the output changes accordingly.

BitcoinTalk
#5
From:
lachesis
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
Very nice! Send Satoshi an email and ask him to add it to trunk.

By the way, anyone having trouble applying this on unix can use:
Code:
curl http://pastebin.ca/raw/1911295 | awk 'sub("$", " ")' | patch
That'll make the line endings on the removed parts match the Windows line endings in the code files.
BitcoinTalk
#6
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
Very nice! Send Satoshi an email and ask him to add it to trunk.

He is welcome to pick it up now.

But I didn't want to push the patch to him until the two FIXME's are resolved.  Those FIXMEs are for 0.01% cases, but still...
BitcoinTalk
#7
From:
lachesis
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
Could you make count=0 return all transactions?
BitcoinTalk
#8
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
Could you make count=0 return all transactions?

Returning all transactions is pretty easy, sure.

I wonder if a better interface might be to follow 'listreceivedbyaddress' and print everything by default, only applying limits if limits were specified.  ie.  make your "count=0" the default.
BitcoinTalk
#9
From:
lachesis
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
I wonder if a better interface might be to follow 'listreceivedbyaddress' and print everything by default, only applying limits if limits were specified.  ie.  make your "count=0" the default.
Perhaps. In that case, you should switch the order of includegenerated and count. Perhaps even make includegenerated true? Generations are included by default in the UI, after all.
BitcoinTalk
#10
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:

Version 6 of listtransactions: http://pastebin.ca/1911570
Raw patch: http://pastebin.ca/raw/1911570

listtransactions implementation should be complete at this point.  The following command syntax is used:
Code:
listtransactions [count=10] [minconf=1] [includegenerated=true]

As lachesis suggested, count=0 will dump all transactions.

FAQ:

Q1) How does 'listtransactions' behave if tail of the block chain changes, eg. 0 confirmations -> 1 confirmation -> 0 confirmations?

A1) 'listtransactions' behaves the same way 'listreceivedbyaddress' behaves...  the output changes accordingly.
BitcoinTalk
#11
From:
Gavin Andresen
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
Couple of quick suggestions:

Using the key name "class" will cause problems for, at least, JavaScript, and probably other languages where "class" is a reserved word.  "type" or "variety" or some other synonym will cause fewer problems later.

Or, maybe better, get rid of that field and just report credits as positive numbers and debits as negative.  And add a separate "generated" field (boolean true or false).

Since each entry refers to a transaction, I'd suggest adding a "tx_id" SHA256 hex-encoded transaction id.  Then listtransactions would play nicely with the refundtransaction JSON-RPC extension (and maybe a future gettransactiondetails that let you get transaction parents, which block the transaction was in, and so on).

Code to get that would look something like:
Code:
            uint256 tx_hash = transaction.GetHash();
            string tx_id = tx_hash.GetHex();
            mapJSONResponse.push_back(Pair("tx_id", tx_id));
BitcoinTalk
#12
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
Couple of quick suggestions:

Using the key name "class" will cause problems for, at least, JavaScript, and probably other languages where "class" is a reserved word.  "type" or "variety" or some other synonym will cause fewer problems later.

Can you be more specific?  All mainstream programming language seem sensibly insensitive to abitrary string contents, JS included.  String content can certainly include language-reserved keywords and parsing tokens.

Since each entry refers to a transaction, I'd suggest adding a "tx_id" SHA256 hex-encoded transaction id.  Then listtransactions would play nicely with the refundtransaction JSON-RPC extension (and maybe a future gettransactiondetails that let you get transaction parents, which block the transaction was in, and so on).

Code to get that would look something like:
Code:
            uint256 tx_hash = transaction.GetHash();
            string tx_id = tx_hash.GetHex();
            mapJSONResponse.push_back(Pair("tx_id", tx_id));

Added, thanks for the suggestion.
BitcoinTalk
#13
From:
jgarzik
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:

Here is 'listtransaction' version 7:
http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/patch.bitcoin-listtransactions

This adds the suggested txn_id field -- very nice suggestion, gavin!  I wanted a unique transaction id, and now I have one Smiley
BitcoinTalk
#14
From:
satoshi
Subject:
Re: [PATCH] implement 'listtransactions'
Date:
What are you needing to use listtransactions for?

The reason I didn't implement listtransactions is I want to make sure web programmers don't use it.  It would be very easy to latch onto that for watching for received payments.  There is no reliable way to do it that way and make sure nothing can slip through the cracks.  Until we have solid example code using getreceivedbyaddress and getreceivedbylabel to point to and say "use this! use this! don't use listtransactions!", I don't think we should implement listtransactions.

When we do implement listtransactions, maybe one way to fight that is to make it all text.  It should not break down the fields into e.g. comment, confirmations, credit, debit.  It could be one pretty formatted string like "0/unconfirmed   0:0:0 date   comment      debit 4  credit 0" or something so it's hard for programmers to do the wrong thing and process it.  It's only for viewing the status of your server.  I guess that would be kinda annoying for web interfaces that would rather format it into html columns though.