How to look at non-wallet transactions?

[running]

I want to be able to look at other transactions not in my wallet ("non-wallet" as bitcoind calls them).

I found out it's not possible using bitcoind. It is possible to call external API, but I don't want to do that since I will be doing it in bigger numbers and I don't want to spam other services.

Is it possible somehow using either bitcoind or some other tools?

[running]

To reply to my own topic:

blockexplorer seem to use this branch
https://github.com/jgarzik/bitcoin

but it seem to be unmantained.

[running]

It seems like getrawtransaction is meant to do this.

However, it just fails at some transactions. Say I want this transaction

https://blockchain.info/tx/6359f0868171b1d194cbee1af2f16ea598ae8fad666d9b012c8ed2b79a236ec4
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/6359f0868171b1d194cbee1af2f16ea598ae8fad666d9b012c8ed2b79a236ec4
http://blockchain.info/rawtx/6359f0868171b1d194cbee1af2f16ea598ae8fad666d9b012c8ed2b79a236ec4

The transaction ID is 6359f0868171b1d194cbee1af2f16ea598ae8fad666d9b012c8ed2b79a236ec4 . If I try

Code:

./bitcoind getrawtransaction '6359f0868171b1d194cbee1af2f16ea598ae8fad666d9b012c8ed2b79a236ec4'

I get

Code:

error: {"code":-5,"message":"No information available about transaction"}

However, if I try

Code:

./bitcoind  getblock '000000000003ba27aa200b1cecaad478d2b00432346c3f1f3986da1afd33e506'

I got

Code:

{
    "hash" : "000000000003ba27aa200b1cecaad478d2b00432346c3f1f3986da1afd33e506",
    "confirmations" : 82622,
    "size" : 957,
    "height" : 100000,
    "version" : 1,
    "merkleroot" : "f3e94742aca4b5ef85488dc37c06c3282295ffec960994b2c0d5ac2a25a95766",
    "tx" : [
        "8c14f0db3df150123e6f3dbbf30f8b955a8249b62ac1d1ff16284aefa3d06d87",
        "fff2525b8931402dd09222c50775608f75787bd2b87e56995a7bdd30f79702c4",
        "6359f0868171b1d194cbee1af2f16ea598ae8fad666d9b012c8ed2b79a236ec4",
        "e9a66845e05d5abc0ad04ec80f774a7e585c6e8db975962d069a522137b80c1d"
    ],
    "time" : 1293623863,
    "nonce" : 274148111,
    "bits" : "1b04864c",
    "difficulty" : 14484.16236123,
    "previousblockhash" : "000000000002d01c1fccc21636b607dfd930d31d01c3a62104612a1719011250",
    "nextblockhash" : "00000000000080b66c911bd5ba14a74260057311eaeb1982802f7010f1a9f090"
}

So the blockchaind knows about the transaction. It just doesn't tell me about it.

[etotheipi]

Armory has arbitrary transaction lookup, but armoryd is fairly immature and has a stupid crash-on-every-new-blockfile bug (every week or so).  But if you're just using it to for arbitrary lookup, you can add a function call to the python code to get any information you want about any transaction.  Hopefully that bug will be fixed in the next couple weeks.

It's very straightforward if you can access it via python code (armoryengine.py).  You can checkout the project and check extras/sample_armory_code.py for how to access arbitrary blocks & transactions.
 
I don't recommend it (yet) for a production environment, but it is usable for lots of things.

[Pieter Wuille]

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9147/getrawtransaction-error-code-5/9152#9152

[running]

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9147/getrawtransaction-error-code-5/9152#9152

That solved the issue! Amazing and thank you!

[Pieter Wuille]

It was in 0.8.0's release notes

[running]

Strange issue - it doesn't work on the very first transaction in blockchain.

http://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

Code:

~/bitcoin-0.8.1-linux/bin/64$ ./bitcoind getrawtransaction 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b
error: {"code":-5,"message":"No information available about transaction"}

It works on all the others, though. I would suggest it's some off-by-one-error in bitcoin.

[Zeilap]

Strange issue - it doesn't work on the very first transaction in blockchain.

http://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

Code:

~/bitcoin-0.8.1-linux/bin/64$ ./bitcoind getrawtransaction 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b
error: {"code":-5,"message":"No information available about transaction"}

It works on all the others, though. I would suggest it's some off-by-one-error in bitcoin.

The transaction in the genesis block is unspendable and is not indexed in the database.