Insight

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.

Prerequisites

• Node.js v0.10.x - Download and Install Node.js. You can also follow this gist for a quick and easy way to install Node.js and npm. If you use Ubuntu:

git clone git@github.com:joyent/node.git
cd node
git checkout v0.10.24
./configure
make
make install

• bitcoind - Download and Install Bitcoin

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, and "~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin" on Mac OS X).

bitcoind must be running and must have finished downloading the blockchain BEFORE running Insight.

• NPM - Node.js package manager, should be automatically installed when you get node.js.

Quick Install

To install Insight, clone the main repository:

$ git clone git@github.com: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:3000

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.

Configuration

All configuration is specified in the config folder, particularly the config.js file. Here you can specify your application name and database name.

bitcoind

There is a bitcoind configuration sample at:

etc/bitcoind/bitcoin.conf

If you need to use a custom bitcoind server set the following environment variables:

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']

If you use this option, make sure that bitcoind is configured to accept incoming connections using 'rpcallowip' as described in https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin.

Alternatively, change config/env/$NODE_ENV.js

In case the network is changed, 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 process can be safely interrupted (CTRL+C) and continued from the synchronization process embedded in main app.

Environment Variables Settings

There are three environments provided by default, development, test, and production. Each of these environments has the following configuration options:

• app.name - This is the name of your app or website, and can be different for each environment. You can tell which environment you are running by looking at the TITLE attribute that your app generates.

To run with a different environment, just specify NODE_ENV as you call grunt:

$ NODE_ENV=test grunt

If you are using node instead of grunt, it is very similar:

$ NODE_ENV=test node server

Development environment

To run insight locally for development:

$ NODE_ENV=development grunt

Other utilities for development

To compile and minify the web application's assets: grunt compile

To run the tests grunt test

Production

You can use pm2 to manage the NodeJS app in production:

$ npm install pm2 -g $ pm2 start insight.js

[forever] (https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever) can also be used for this purpose.

DB storage requirement

To store the blockchain and address related information, Insight uses LevelDB. Two DBs are created: txs and blocks. By default these are stored on /db (this can be changed on config/config.js).

As of February 2014, storing the blockchain takes ~31Gb of disk space on levelDB, and Insight needs ~10 minutes to complete the syncronization process on testnet.

Syncing old blockchain data

Old blockchain data can be manually synced from Insight:

$ utils/sync.js -S

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.

API

A REST API is provided at /api. The entry points are:

Block

  /api/block/[:hash]
  /api/block/00000000a967199a2fad0877433c93df785a8d8ce062e5f9b451cd1397bdbf62

Transaction

  /api/tx/[:txid]
  /api/tx/525de308971eabd941b139f46c7198b5af9479325c2395db7f2fb5ae8562556c

Address

  /api/addr/[:addr]
  /api/addr/mmvP3mTe53qxHdPqXEvdu8WdC7GfQ2vmx5

Transactions by Block

  /api/txs/?block=HASH
  /api/txs/?block=00000000fa6cf7367e50ad14eb0ca4737131f256fc4c5841fd3c3f140140e6b6

Transactions by Address

  /api/txs/?address=ADDR
  /api/txs/?address=mmhmMNfBiZZ37g1tgg2t8DDbNoEdqKVxAL

Sync status

  /api/sync

Web Socket API

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",
  "orphaned":false,
  "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"
}

Github

Insight

License

(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.