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Setup Bitcoin Development Environment

Bitcoin or blockchain is crazy hot on internet today, and I’m curious what’s the best way for a programmer to get start with it. After read some books, I found that you can setup a test bitcoin testnet and play with it, so in this post I will share how it works.

Get a ubuntu server

First of all, you need to get a server or in your local environment. I’m running with latest ubuntu on a VPS server.

Install docker-ce in ubuntu

I’m using docker-ce here. To install docker-ce in ubuntu, you can follow the steps:

remove the old docker if exists

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$ sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io

Update apt repos.

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$ sudo apt-get update

Install dependencies packages

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$ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
$ curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
$ sudo apt-get update

Install docker-ce

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$ sudo apt-get install docker-ce

Install bitcoin-testnet-box

Get the docker image.

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docker pull freewil/bitcoin-testnet-box

Run bitcoin-testnet-box

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docker run -t -i -p 19001:19001 -p 19011:19011 freewil/bitcoin-testnet-box

Then you will see something similar with:

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tester@84074da951a2:~/bitcoin-testnet-box$

Check the info

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make getinfo

Generate blocks

Must generate 200 blocks to get balance

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make generate BLOCKS=200

Install ruby

I’m using ruby to call the rpc-json server, so ruby have to be installed in server first.

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apt-get install ruby

Run ruby script to bitcoin rpc-json

I got the code sample from bitcoin.it wiki, but replace the server with the username/password/post from the configuration in bitcoin-testnet-box. Save following code outside the docker instance as test.rb

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require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'json'

class BitcoinRPC
  def initialize(service_url)
    @uri = URI.parse(service_url)
  end

  def method_missing(name, *args)
    post_body = { 'method' => name, 'params' => args, 'id' => 'jsonrpc' }.to_json
    resp = JSON.parse( http_post_request(post_body) )
    raise JSONRPCError, resp['error'] if resp['error']
    resp['result']
  end

  def http_post_request(post_body)
    http    = Net::HTTP.new(@uri.host, @uri.port)
    request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(@uri.request_uri)
    request.basic_auth @uri.user, @uri.password
    request.content_type = 'application/json'
    request.body = post_body
    http.request(request).body
  end

  class JSONRPCError < RuntimeError; end
end

if $0 == __FILE__
  h = BitcoinRPC.new('http://admin1:123@127.0.0.1:19001')
  p h.getbalance
  p h.getinfo
  p h.getnewaddress
  p h.dumpprivkey( h.getnewaddress )
  # also see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls_list
end

Run the code:

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ruby test.rb

You will see something like:

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5539.9999616
{"version"=>130200, "protocolversion"=>70015, "walletversion"=>130000, "balance"=>5539.9999616, "blocks"=>211, "timeoffset"=>0, "connections"=>1, "proxy"=>"","difficulty"=>4.656542373906925e-10, "testnet"=>false, "keypoololdest"=>1520155323, "keypoolsize"=>100, "paytxfee"=>0.0, "relayfee"=>1.0e-05, "errors"=>""}
"mve5QiJZmVQTGqeYNwi3xf78vrVp7eArJL"
"cRtYox2ALixpCuhL7rdx7LzCKMKaA6gCbogVkb3YgsxBAdTYZwK6"

References

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