bitcoin-python-async-rpc

Lightweight Bitcoin async JSON-RPC Python client.

Serves as a tiny layer between an application and a Bitcoin daemon, its primary usage is querying the current state of Bitcoin blockchain, network stats, transactions...

If you want complete Bitcoin experience in Python, consult python-bitcoinlib.

Installation

$ pip install bitcoinrpc

Supported methods

Here is a list of supported methods, divided by their categories. Should you need method not implemented, wrap the call in BitcoinRPC.acall(<your_method>, ...) coroutine.

Blockchain

Method	Supported?
getbestblockhash	✔
getblock	✔
getblockchaininfo	✔
getblockcount	✔
getblockhash	✔
getblockheader	✔
getblockstats	✔
getchaintips	✔
getdifficulty	✔
getmempoolinfo	✔
getnetworkhashps	✔

Mining

Method	Supported?
getmininginfo	✔

Network

Method	Supported?
getconnectioncount	✔
getnetworkinfo	✔

Raw transactions

Method	Supported?
analyzepsbt	✔
combinepsbt	✔
decodepsbt	✔
finalizepsbt	✔
getrawtransaction	✔
joinpsbts	✔
utxoupdatepsbt	✔

Wallet

Method	Supported?
walletprocesspsbt	✔

Usage

Minimal illustration (assuming Python 3.8+, where you can run async code in console)

$ python -m asyncio
>>> import asyncio
>>>
>>> from bitcoinrpc import BitcoinRPC
>>> rpc = BitcoinRPC.from_config("http://localhost:18443", ("rpc_user", "rpc_passwd"))
>>> await rpc.getconnectioncount()
10
>>> await rpc.aclose()  # Clean-up resource

You can also use the BitcoinRPC as an asynchronous context manager, which does all the resource clean-up automatically, as the following example shows:

$ cat btc_rpc_minimal.py
import asyncio

from bitcoinrpc import BitcoinRPC


async def main():
    async with BitcoinRPC.from_config("http://localhost:18443", ("rpc_user", "rpc_password")) as rpc:
        print(await rpc.getconnectioncount())


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Running this script yields:

$ python btc_rpc_minimal.py
10

If you want customize the underlying httpx.AsyncClient, you can instantiate the BitcoinRPC with one. Consider the following script, where the client is configured to log every HTTP request before it is sent out over the wire:

$ cat btc_custom_client.py
import asyncio

import httpx

from bitcoinrpc import BitcoinRPC


async def log_request(request: httpx.Request) -> None:
    print(request.content)


async def main() -> None:
    client = httpx.AsyncClient(auth=("rpc_user", "rpc_password"), event_hooks={"request": [log_request]})
    async with BitcoinRPC(url="http://localhost:18443", client=client) as rpc:
        print(await rpc.getconnectioncount())


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Running this script yields:

$ python btc_custom_client.py 
b'{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"getconnectioncount","params":[]}'
0

Testing

A Containerfile is provided as a means to build an OCI image of a Bitcoin regtest node. Build the image (podman is used, but docker should be fine too):

$ podman build \
  -f Containerfile \
  --build-arg BTC_VERSION=v24.1 \
  -t bitcoin-regtest:v24.1 \
  -t bitcoin-regtest:latest \
  .

and run it afterwards:

$ podman run \
  --rm \
  -it \
  --mount=type=bind,src=./tests/bitcoin-regtest.conf,target=/home/rpc/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf \
  -p 127.0.0.1:18443:18443 \
  --name bitcoin-regtest \
  localhost/bitcoin-regtest:v24.1

which will expose the Bitcoin regtest node on port 18443, accesible from localhost only, with RPC user/password rpc_user/rpc_password.

After you are done testing, stop the container via:

$ podman stop bitcoin-regtest

---

If you want to test against a different version of Bitcoin node, pass a different tag in the build stage:

$ podman build \
  -f Containerfile \
  --build-arg BTC_VERSION=v25.0 \
  -t bitcoin-regtest:v25.0 \
  -t bitcoin-regtest:latest \
  .

---

Different settings of the Bitcoin node may be passed via mounting your custom configuration file, or optionally as "arguments" to podman run:

$ podman run \
  --rm \
  -it \
  --mount=type=bind,src=<path/to/your/config_file>,target=/home/rpc/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf \
  -p 127.0.0.1:18443:18443 \
  --name bitcoin-regtest \
  localhost/bitcoin-regtest:v24.1 <your> <args> ...

---

Please, keep in mind that Bitcoin node compiled in the image is intended for testing & debugging purposes only! It may serve you as an inspiration for building your own, production-ready Bitcoin node, but its intended usage is testing!

---

For testing this library, install tox (preferably, in a fresh virtual environment).

Afterwards, coding-style is enforced by running:

(your-venv-with-tox) $ tox run -e linters

and tests corresponding are run (this example uses Python3.11)

(your-venv-with-tox) $ tox run -e py311

If you do not want to run tests marked as "integration", which denote those requiring the bitcoin regtest node to run, you can filter them out by:

(your-venv-with-tox) $ tox run -e py311 -- -m 'not integration'

Changelog

• 2024/02/12 - 0.7.0: More robust handling of JSON-RPC 2.0 specification (thanks https://github.com/joxerx !)

  • Breaking change: change the handling of responses with non-2xx status codes in 'BitcoinRPC.acall'. Previously, said errors would be raised directly via the httpx.Response.raise_for_status method. Now, httpx.Response.raise_for_status is used only when the server returns an empty response, which may happen due to for example bad authentication. In all other cases, defer the decision whether RPC call was a success or a failure to the inspection of return JSON.

• 2023/06/04 - 0.6.1: Add RPC methods, mainly concerned with PSBTs

• 2023/06/01 - 0.6.0:

  • BitcoinRPC is now instantiated with a httpx.AsyncClient directly and an optional counter argument, which is a callable that may be used for distinguishing the JSON-RPC requests. Old-style instantiation, with url and optional user/password tuple, is kept within BitcoinRPC.from_config method.

• 2021/12/28 - 0.5.0 change the signature of BitcoinRPC from host, port, ... to url, ..., delegating the creation of the node url to the caller.

License

MIT