[Announce] bitcoinmonitor.net - Free professional notification/payment service

[Herbert]

Good to see another alternative to the old notify service

It would be neat if we all could agree on a subset of POST data, that we all send, so that the same code could be used with any notify service, afaik theres 4 to pick from now.

That does not prevent each software from adding extra data, just as long as the basic data is what is used for signature verification.

That would also mean any shop modules could easily be adapted for each site.

Like that idea! Maybe we can start a page on the bitcoin wiki to discuss/define the format?

[Herbert]

New Feature online: RSS/Atom feeds

Agents now have a new notification option. You can enable creation of feed entries in the agent settings. If feed entries are enabled for an agent, you will see two links "rss feed" and "atom feed" in the dashboard.

As an example I set up two feeds:
Check how many coins DeepBit is getting on the famous 1VayNert... address: Atom - RSS
Follow incoming donations for bitcoinmonitor.net: Atom - RSS

Note:
These links, by nature of rss/atom, are public. Anybody who knows the url can read them (and it is quite easy to guess feed urls with the current url scheme...). So it's probably not a good idea to setup an rss feed for your personal wallet unless you want everybody to know whats your income ;-)

[MORA]

Like that idea! Maybe we can start a page on the bitcoin wiki to discuss/define the format?

Sure, or another thread for the discussion part.

For the rough part we seem to be using the same idea, some values concatted together with a secret value and hashed, the values and hash algorithm is different, but...

[mcorlett]

I've donated half a bitcoin, and will double my donation if you add functionality for addition and removal of an agent's watched addresses via an API call.

This way, you don't have to constantly monitor hundreds of addresses that may or may not be in use, and I can ping you with a new address for every sale and remove it once it's done. Win/win situation. Bonus points if you can make it so that addresses not in use for N days are automatically removed.

[Herbert]

I've donated half a bitcoin, and will double my donation if you add functionality for addition and removal of an agent's watched addresses via an API call.

Appreciated :-)

This way, you don't have to constantly monitor hundreds of addresses that may or may not be in use, and I can ping you with a new address for every sale and remove it once it's done. Win/win situation. Bonus points if you can make it so that addresses not in use for N days are automatically removed.

Ha, this is exactly what I had in mind for the API!
Like you said, availability of these features should simplify both ends. At the moment the API development is still in early stages as there are/were few other topics I want to get done before (feed implementation was the main point, one more bigger task to do). So it will take probably around 2 more weeks until i have a first API ready for testing.

[Herbert]

New Feature online: withdrawal notification

Agents can now be configured to check for incoming transactions (Deposits), outgoing transactions (Withdrawals) or both. Useful e.g. if you want to keep an eye on your savings account and want to be alerted if any fund is removed without your knowledge
This is available immediately for all types of notifications (currently email, newsfeed and url callback).

Also a potential issue is now fixed which could result in missed transactions/notifications (happened when a new block was received which contains a transaction which has not been seen before as an individual tx message. Now whenever a new block is coming in the contained transactions are double-checked to make sure I don't miss a notification). I don't think this ever happened so far, though

Have fun!

[Herbert]

Hmpf. Something is going wrong on the production system with the new build, while at home everything runs perfectly. Rolled back to the previous release, so withdrawal notifications are currently NOT available.

[Herbert]

Hmpf. Something is going wrong on the production system with the new build, while at home everything runs perfectly. Rolled back to the previous release, so withdrawal notifications are currently NOT available.

Issue solved in the meantime. I should have known not to deploy being tired in the middle of the night - forgot to start the new build of bitcoind and the old one does not provide all necessary parameters with the block notification...

[stcupp]

Agents can now be configured to check for incoming transactions (Deposits), outgoing transactions (Withdrawals) or both. Useful e.g. if you want to keep an eye on your savings account and want to be alerted if any fund is removed without your knowledge

Good idea..... bad thing is if you get that notification and you didn't send those coins your balance has probably been wiped

[Vernon715]

Seems pretty useful.

[mcorlett]

At the moment the API development is still in early stages as there are/were few other topics I want to get done before (feed implementation was the main point, one more bigger task to do). So it will take probably around 2 more weeks until i have a first API ready for testing.

Can I get a status update on this?

[Herbert]

At the moment the API development is still in early stages as there are/were few other topics I want to get done before (feed implementation was the main point, one more bigger task to do). So it will take probably around 2 more weeks until i have a first API ready for testing.

Can I get a status update on this?

Sure! Due to some other (unrelated) stuff needing my attention I had less time than expected to work on the API.
Status: The basics (Create/Read/Update/Delete) are working, but I am not decided yet on the authentication topic. But this should be solved soon and current plan is to have at least partial features available end of this week.

[mcorlett]

Sure! Due to some other (unrelated) stuff needing my attention I had less time than expected to work on the API.
Status: The basics (Create/Read/Update/Delete) are working, but I am not decided yet on the authentication topic. But this should be solved soon and current plan is to have at least partial features available end of this week.

Looking forward to trying it out!

[Herbert]

Although I am not yet fully happy with it the API is now online  . I will certainly add some more stuff (oAuth authentication, better response/error messages, ...) but the general idea will stay like it is now.

The API follows the REST scheme, which means you can create, read, update and delete your agents and notification settings with standard http POST/GET/PUT/DELETE operations.

Currently only basic authentication is in place, so you have to provide user and password with each request, which of course is quite inconvinient... Next thing to add is oAuth token-based authentication.

Note: Be sure to always include the trailing slash in any url!

Get information about all your agents:
Browser: http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agents/
Commandline using curl:

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agents/

Create a new agent:
You need to provide only 2 parameters:

• name: The agents name
• watch_type: "1" for notification on withdrawal, "2" for notificatoin on deposits, "3" for both notifications
• addresses: (optional) list of addresses to watch, seperated by comma
  

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "name=new_agent&watch_type=2" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agents/

Change an existing agent:
You need to know the ID of the agent (get it from the agent list). You can set:

• name: The agents name
• watch_type: "1" for notification on withdrawal, "2" for notificatoin on deposits, "3" for both notifications
• addresses: list of addresses to watch, seperated by comma
  

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X PUT -d "addresses=<bitcoin addresses seperated by comma>" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_ID>/

Delete an existing agent:
You need to know the ID of the agent (get it from the agent list).

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X DELETE http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_ID>/

Get notification settings for an agent:
You need to know the ID of the agent you want to work with (get it from the agent list). You need to provide the notification type you want to access:

• email
• url
• feed

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_ID>/notification/<notification_type>/

Create new notification setting:
You need to know the ID of the agent you want to work with (get it from the agent list). Required parameters:

• req_confirmations: Confirmations required, 0 to 10
• email: email (required for type "email")

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "req_confirmations=0" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_ID>/notification/feed/

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "req_confirmations=0&email=me@here.com" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_ID>/notification/email/

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "req_confirmations=0&url=http://my.shop.com/payment_confirmation/" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_ID>/notification/url/

List bitcoinaddresses watched by agent:
You need to know the ID of the agent you want to work with (get it from the agent list)

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agents/<agent_id>/address/

Add a bitcoinaddress to an agent:
You need to provide 1 parameters:

• address: address to watch
  

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "address=<address>" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_id>/address/

Remove a bitcoinaddress from an agent:
No parameters as address is the ressource and part of url:

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X DELETE http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_id>/address/<address>

The agent_ID is guaranteed to never change once an agent is created. So if you have an agent set up it is safe to hardcode its ID in your code.

As all this is still not matured I will not add API documentation to the site itself. As soon as i got some user feedback and added the missing stuff I will also extend the documentation.

[mcorlett]

Sent the promised 0.5 BTC.

I will soon add two more convinience methods for directly adding/removing a bitcoin address from an agent. Right now this is not possible. When you change an existing agent you have to provide all addresses that it should watch as the provided addresses will replace the addresses currently configured.

This is what I'm really looking for before I launch this service I'm working on. You've got another bitcoin in your wallet once you implement this!

[Herbert]

Thanks mcorlett

3 new methods are now available for adding/listing/removing addresses of an agent. I edited my previous post to include the new methods (at bottom) :-)

Edit: Be prepared that the API will still change. You should not yet include it in production systems!

[mcorlett]

Add a bitcoinaddress to an agent:
You need to provide 1 parameters:

• address: address to watch
  

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "address=<address>" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/address/

You missed the ID parameter, this should be:

Add a bitcoinaddress to an agent:
You need to provide 1 parameters:

• address: address to watch
  

Code:

curl -i -u <user>:<password> -X POST -d "address=<address>" http://www.bitcoinmonitor.net/api/v1/agent/<agent_id>/address/

(Also sent another bitcoin. I'm good to go now!)

[Herbert]

You missed the ID parameter

Fixed

[Herbert]

Finished writing a zillion of unittests for the API and indeed found half a zillion bugs with them
=> Production site updated.

The API itself has not changed, so everything should work like before. Still I dont want to make the API "official" until a better authentication mechanism (probably oAuth) is in place.

[Herbert]

Bonus points if you can make it so that addresses not in use for N days are automatically removed.

I am thinking about different possibilities here.

Remove watched address after

• a specified time without transaction ("time-based expiration")
• a specified amount is received/exceeded ("amount-based expiration")
• any transaction is received ("one-shot")

I think the first two variants make sense for different scenarios, while for the one-shot variant I can not think of a good usecase. Opinions?