listtransactions reformatting

Example patch: http://tinyurl.com/6679go5

Changes:
* Additions to your wallet always are category:"receive", no matter what kind
  of transaction
* Generated coins have an extra key, from:"generation"
* All transactions have a new key, status:
  * "orphan" -- Another block chain invalidated this transaction (only for
                generation?)
  * "validating" -- Default stage for transactions; 0-2 confirmations for
                    ordinary sends, and 0-100 for generated coins
  * "processing" -- 3-6 confirms for ordinary sends; 101-120 for generated
  * "confirmed" -- over 6/120 confirmations
  * "expired" -- for ordinary sends that have timed out without getting into a
                 block, or had its inputs otherwise respent

This change is proposed to fix webservices being ignorant of generated transactions by keeping a standard category/format for all similar types of entries.

Thoughts?

Hi,

You may have a look at the following proposal. It associates generations txouts with the appropriate addresses and accounts. (See my previous mail)

https://github.com/sgimenez/bitcoin/commit/a8e6510042f2f7f951414c7da124668b30da4acd

> * Additions to your wallet always are category:"receive", no matter
>   what kind of transaction

Either this, or maybe webservices should be told to forget about categories and to rely only on the sign of the amounts. Maybe a "type" field with values "credit"/"debit" could help them? This way, more categories could be added later (escrow transactions, or other scripts that might be standardized).

An official API guide (not just a technical reference) would be very valuable here.

Last, I agree that {list,get}receivedby* should include generated amounts, because there is currently no way to do this for generations. (This issue is not addressed by my patch yet)

Best, Stéphane

On Saturday, July 16, 2011 3:59:07 PM Stéphane Gimenez wrote:

> Hi,
>
> You may have a look at the following proposal. It associates
> generations txouts with the appropriate addresses and accounts.
> (See my previous mail)
>
> https://github.com/sgimenez/bitcoin/commit/a8e6510042f2f7f951414c7da124668b
> 30da4acd

It is also very broken, which is why I took the time to come up with something workable when I needed it ;)

> > * Additions to your wallet always are category:"receive", no matter
> >   what kind of transaction
>
> Either this, or maybe webservices should be told to forget about
> categories and to rely only on the sign of the amounts. Maybe a "type"
> field with values "credit"/"debit" could help them? This way, more
> categories could be added later (escrow transactions, or other scripts
> that might be standardized).

"move" is positive amount, but doesn't change the actual value in the wallet.

Fixing listtransactions (and listreceivedby/etc) so coin generation transactions to particular addresses/accounts are credited to that address/account is a good idea.

I don't think changing listtransactions output would be on the priority list for any web services operators (in fact, I think most would scream bloody murder if the output changed in a way that forced them to change their code). The accounts-related things that I think ARE on their high-priority list are:

1) Fixing getbalance and listtransactions performance problems when you have hundreds of thousands of transactions and thousands of accounts.

2) push-notification of coins received to accounts, so they don't have to poll for changes.

Oops, sorry Gavin. Meant to reply to the mailing list.

---------------

People should not be using accounts for receiving funds on merchant sites. There are too many bugs associated with it, and it has innumerable problems. Like not being able to merge wallets or lack of find grained control when moving funds around.

https://gitorious.org/intersango/bitcoind/commit/50a6ab79ed8c5398648c52fbdc4be07f70dedadb

This is the recommended & most safest way to receive funds on a merchant site ATM.

listreceivedsince <timest> is called every so often by a cron job. The output is parsed and placed into another table and then another job will go and create a deposit request from that table. The next call to listreceivedsince <timest> will call with the time of the last transaction, and doubles must be discarded using the txid. Polling listtransactions is less convenient since you always repeat old transactions that you may not need, get generated transactions and have to pick a good number that goes back far enough, but not too far.

________________________________ From: Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen@gmail•com> To: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge•net Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 5:02 AM Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] [RFC] listtransactions reformatting

Fixing listtransactions (and listreceivedby/etc) so coin generation transactions to particular addresses/accounts are credited to that address/account is a good idea.

I don't think changing listtransactions output would be on the priority list for any web services operators (in fact, I think most would scream bloody murder if the output changed in a way that forced them to change their code). The accounts-related things that I think ARE on their high-priority list are:

1) Fixing getbalance and listtransactions performance problems when you have hundreds of thousands of transactions and thousands of accounts.

2) push-notification of coins received to accounts, so they don't have to poll for changes.