Transaction list query

[timcdg]

Hi

I am a beginner developer who is wanting to create a website which accepts Bitcoin payments. As part of the back-end of the website, I am wanting a simple CSV database to be created at the end of every day with two columns, "Source Bitcoin Address" and "amount paid".

I have tried using the Bitcoind daemon with the command line "bitcoind listtransactions" but this does not give source addresses.

I have also tried using the blockchain.info developer APIs but they produce data in a very complex format which is very difficult to parse in order to get the information I am wanting. Anyway, I do not want my website to be dependent on a third-party website.

Does anyone know how I can achieve my objective?

Thank you very much.

Kind regards

Tim

[DannyHamilton]

. . . I am wanting a simple CSV database to be created at the end of every day with two columns, "Source Bitcoin Address" and . . .

Well, there's your first mistake.

The bitcoin protocol has no such concept as a "source bitcoin address". You are looking for something that doesn't exist.

Some people take a single type of payment and based on the signature in that type of payment they calculate a value that they like to call a "source address", but that is a very bad idea.  There are plenty of situations where such an assumption turns out to be wrong, and building a business model around such an invalid assumption is going to just create more problems for you.

If you want to uniquely identify who a payment is from, or what a payment is for, then you should be generating a unique receiving address for each transaciton.  Then you can keep track of why you generated the address.

[timcdg]

The bitcoin protocol has no such concept as a "source bitcoin address". You are looking for something that doesn't exist.

Hi Danny

Thank you very much for your reply.

If it does not exist then how are the blockchain.info APIs able to successfully find the source addresses?

[DannyHamilton]

If it does not exist then how are the blockchain.info APIs able to successfully find the source addresses?

- snip -
Some people take a single type of payment and based on the signature in that type of payment they calculate a value that they like to call a "source address", but that is a very bad idea.  There are plenty of situations where such an assumption turns out to be wrong, and building a business model around such an invalid assumption is going to just create more problems for you.
- snip -