Bitcoin Forum

I have been playing around with bitcoind and it seems fairly straight forward but it lacks a functionality that I would like to have.

I would like to have the functionality of managing cold wallets through a command line interface which I could control via an API. So basically, what I am looking for is an overview of the different command line implementations for running a full bitcoin node. Preferably one that can handle cold wallets. I am interested in integrating this with PHP scripts, Python scripts, and perhaps also C++.

I believe most of the popular clients have a command-line interface compatible with bitcoind, so if one of them has a feature you're interested in that might be something to look into. As for cold wallets via API, what exactly do you mean? Unless the entire computer is offline, you wouldn't be able to do anything more than potentially watch them as send funds to them, and if it is then you can just treat the regular wallets as cold (so long as it never goes online).

It would be possible to execute Bitcoin daemon with various -wallet=<file> option, by calling it from another environment. However, it sounds like a good way to lose coins when you make a mistake.

why not manage the private keys instead?

launch with a new fresh wallet, import the keys you need, do what you need, remove the wallet.
repeat as needed.