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https://github.com/petertodd/python-bitcoinlib

Python3 library providing an easy interface to the Bitcoin data structures and protocol.
https://github.com/petertodd/python-bitcoinlib

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Python3 library providing an easy interface to the Bitcoin data structures and protocol.

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README 

        
# python-bitcoinlib



This Python3 library provides an easy interface to the bitcoin data

structures and protocol. The approach is low-level and "ground up", with a

focus on providing tools to manipulate the internals of how Bitcoin works.



"The Swiss Army Knife of the Bitcoin protocol." - Wladimir J. van der Laan



## Requirements



    sudo apt-get install libssl-dev



The RPC interface, `bitcoin.rpc`, should work with Bitcoin Core v24.0 or later.

Older versions may work but there do exist some incompatibilities.



## Structure



Everything consensus critical is found in the modules under bitcoin.core. This

rule is followed pretty strictly, for instance chain parameters are split into

consensus critical and non-consensus-critical.



    bitcoin.core            - Basic core definitions, datastructures, and

                              (context-independent) validation

    bitcoin.core.key        - ECC pubkeys

    bitcoin.core.script     - Scripts and opcodes

    bitcoin.core.scripteval - Script evaluation/verification

    bitcoin.core.serialize  - Serialization



In the future the bitcoin.core may use the Satoshi sourcecode directly as a

library. Non-consensus critical modules include the following:



    bitcoin          - Chain selection

    bitcoin.base58   - Base58 encoding

    bitcoin.bloom    - Bloom filters (incomplete)

    bitcoin.net      - Network communication (in flux)

    bitcoin.messages - Network messages (in flux)

    bitcoin.rpc      - Bitcoin Core RPC interface support

    bitcoin.wallet   - Wallet-related code, currently Bitcoin address and

                       private key support



Effort has been made to follow the Satoshi source relatively closely, for

instance Python code and classes that duplicate the functionality of

corresponding Satoshi C++ code uses the same naming conventions: CTransaction,

CBlockHeader, nValue etc. Otherwise Python naming conventions are followed.



## Mutable vs. Immutable objects



Like the Bitcoin Core codebase CTransaction is immutable and

CMutableTransaction is mutable; unlike the Bitcoin Core codebase this

distinction also applies to COutPoint, CTxIn, CTxOut, and CBlock.



## Endianness Gotchas



Rather confusingly Bitcoin Core shows transaction and block hashes as

little-endian hex rather than the big-endian the rest of the world uses for

SHA256. python-bitcoinlib provides the convenience functions x() and lx() in

bitcoin.core to convert from big-endian and little-endian hex to raw bytes to

accommodate this. In addition see b2x() and b2lx() for conversion from bytes to

big/little-endian hex.



## Module import style



While not always good style, it's often convenient for quick scripts if

`import *` can be used. To support that all the modules have `__all__` defined

appropriately.



# Example Code



See `examples/` directory. For instance this example creates a transaction

spending a pay-to-script-hash transaction output:



    $ PYTHONPATH=. examples/spend-p2sh-txout.py

    



## Selecting the chain to use



Do the following:



    import bitcoin

    bitcoin.SelectParams(NAME)



Where NAME is one of 'testnet', 'mainnet', 'signet', or 'regtest'. The chain currently

selected is a global variable that changes behavior everywhere, just like in

the Satoshi codebase.



## Unit tests



Under bitcoin/tests using test data from Bitcoin Core. To run them:



    python3 -m unittest discover



Alternately, if Tox (see https://tox.readthedocs.org/) is available on your

system, you can run unit tests for multiple Python versions:



    ./runtests.sh



HTML coverage reports can then be found in the htmlcov/ subdirectory.



## Documentation



Sphinx documentation is in the "doc" subdirectory. Run "make help" from there

to see how to build. You will need the Python "sphinx" package installed.



Currently this is just API documentation generated from the code and

docstrings. Higher level written docs would be useful, perhaps starting with

much of this README. Pages are written in reStructuredText and linked from

index.rst.