insight is an open-source bitcoin blockchain explorer with complete REST and websocket APIs. Insight runs in NodeJS, and uses AngularJS for the front-end and LevelDB for storage.
- bitcoind - Download and Install Bitcoin
insight needs a trusted bitcoind node to run. insight will connect to the node thru the RPC API, Peer-to-peer protocol and will even read its raw .dat files for syncing.
Configure bitcoind to listen to RPC calls and set txindex to true.
The easiest way to do this is by copying ./etc/bitcoind/bitcoin.conf to your
bitcoin data directory (usually "~/.bitcoin" on Linux, "%appdata%\Bitcoin\" on Windows,
or "~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin" on Mac OS X).
bitcoind must be running and must have finished downloading the blockchain before running insight.
-
Node.js v0.10.x - Download and Install Node.js.
-
NPM - Node.js package manager, should be automatically installed when you get node.js.
To install Insight, clone the main repository:
$ git clone [email protected]:bitpay/insight.git && cd insight
Install dependencies:
$ npm install
Run the main application:
$ node insight.js
Then open a browser and go to:
http://localhost:3001
Please note that the app will need to sync its internal database with the blockchain state, which may take some time. You can check sync progress from within the web interface.
All configuration is specified in the config folder, particularly the config.js file. There you can specify your application name and database name. Certain configuration values are pulled from environment variables is they are defined:
BITCOIND_HOST # RPC bitcoind host
BITCOIND_PORT # RPC bitcoind Port
BITCOIND_P2P_PORT # P2P bitcoind Port
BITCOIND_USER # RPC username
BITCOIND_PASS # RPC password
BITCOIND_DATADIR # bitcoind datadir for livenet, or datadir/testnet3 for testnet
INSIGHT_NETWORK [= 'livenet' | 'testnet']
Make sure that bitcoind is configured to [accept incoming connections using 'rpcallowip'] (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin).
In case the network is changed (testnet or livenet), levelDB database needs to be deleted. This can be performed running:
util/sync.js -D and waiting for insight to synchronize again. Once the database is deleted, the sync.js process can be safely interrupted (CTRL+C) and continued from the synchronization process embedded in main app.
To run insight locally for development with grunt:
$ NODE_ENV=development grunt
To compile and minify the web application's assets:
$ grunt compile
To run the tests
$ grunt test
Contributions and suggestions are welcomed at insight github repository.
To store the blockchain and address related information, insight uses LevelDB. Two DBs are created: txs and blocks. By default these are stored on
<insight root>/db
this can be changed on config/config.js.
As of February 2014, storing the livenet blockchain takes ~31GB of disk space on levelDB, and takes ~8hrs. For testnet, those values are reduced to 2GB and 20 minutes respectively.
Old blockchain data can be manually synced issuing:
$ utils/sync.js
Check utils/sync.js --help for options, particulary -D to erase the current DB.
NOTE that there is no need to run this manually since the historic syncronization is embedded on the web application, so by running you will trigger the historic sync automatically.
A REST API is provided at /api. The entry points are:
/api/block/[:hash]
/api/block/00000000a967199a2fad0877433c93df785a8d8ce062e5f9b451cd1397bdbf62
/api/tx/[:txid]
/api/tx/525de308971eabd941b139f46c7198b5af9479325c2395db7f2fb5ae8562556c
/api/addr/[:addr]
/api/addr/mmvP3mTe53qxHdPqXEvdu8WdC7GfQ2vmx5
/api/txs/?block=HASH
/api/txs/?block=00000000fa6cf7367e50ad14eb0ca4737131f256fc4c5841fd3c3f140140e6b6
/api/txs/?address=ADDR
/api/txs/?address=mmhmMNfBiZZ37g1tgg2t8DDbNoEdqKVxAL
/api/sync
/api/peer
The web socket API is served using socket.io at:
/socket.io/1/
Bitcoin network events published are: 'tx': new transaction received from network. Data will be a app/models/Transaction object. Sample output:
{
"txid":"00c1b1acb310b87085c7deaaeba478cef5dc9519fab87a4d943ecbb39bd5b053",
"processed":false
...
}
'block': new block received from network. Data will be a app/models/Block object. Sample output:
{
"hash":"000000004a3d187c430cd6a5e988aca3b19e1f1d1727a50dead6c8ac26899b96",
"time":1389789343,
...
}
'sync': every 1% increment on the sync task, this event will be triggered.
Sample output:
{
blocksToSync: 164141,
syncedBlocks: 475,
upToExisting: true,
scanningBackward: true,
isEndGenesis: true,
end: "000000000933ea01ad0ee984209779baaec3ced90fa3f408719526f8d77f4943",
isStartGenesis: false,
start: "000000009f929800556a8f3cfdbe57c187f2f679e351b12f7011bfc276c41b6d"
}
(The MIT License)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.