insight is an open-source bitcoin blockchain explorer with complete REST and websocket APIs. Insight runs in NodeJS, uses AngularJS for the front-end and LevelDB for storage.
Check some screenshots and more details at insight's project homepage.
- 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.
Check the Prerequisites section above before installing.
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 if 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'.
In case the network is changed (testnet to livenet or vice versa) 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.
The initial synchronization process scans the blockchain from the paired bitcoind server to update addresses and balances. insight needs one (and only one) trusted bitcoind node to run. This node must have finished downloading the blockchain befure running insight.
While insight is synchronizing the website can be accessed (the sync process is embedded in the webserver), but there may be missing data or incorrect balances for addresses. The 'sync' status is shown on the top-right of all pages.
The blockchain can be read from bitcoind's raw .dat
files or RPC interface. Reading the information from the .dat
files is much faster so it's the recommended (and default) alternative. .dat
files are scanned in the default location for each platform. In case a non-standard location is used, it needs to be defined (see the Configuration section). The synchronization type being used can be seen at the Status page. As of February 2014, using .dat
files the sync process takes 7 hrs. for livenet and 20 mins. for testnet.
While synchronizing the blockchain, insight listens for new blocks and transactions relayed by the bitcoind node. Those are also stored on insight's database. In case insight is shutdown for a period of time, restarting it will trigger a partial (historic) synchronization of the blockchain. Depending on the size of that synchronization task, a reverse RPC or forward .dat
syncing strategy will be used.
If bitcoind is shutdown, insight needs to be stopped and restarted once bitcoind is restarted.
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 synchronization is embedded on the web application, so by running you will trigger the historic sync automatically.
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 ~30GB of disk space (2GB for the testnet).
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.
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.