Just trying to fork off the discussion from #3082. Seems like the is an interest for an RPC client with "like tab completion, and inline help, and batch processing, and pipelines of queries, etc"
My biased vote goes toward building it with Python, because there are plenty of existing libs for that. Would the script in contrib/bitrpc/ be a good start?
Other questions involve feature set, and how to manage the executable. I've leave those for discussion though.
What kind of interactivity are you aiming at? The simplest implementation would connect, load the RPC proxy object into the context and drop to the Python shell.
Well that is up for discussion. I think the best way to go about it would to build one feature set at a time, starting with tab completion since that should be the easiest to accomplish.
Agreed on that approach. On Oct 22, 2013 10:16 AM, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" < notifications@github.com> wrote:
What kind of interactivity are you aiming at? The simplest implementation would connect, load the RPC proxy object into the context and drop to the Python shell.
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3122#issuecomment-26806434 .
Yes but I mean do you want an interactive Python interpreter? Or make your own mini-language?
For example there are tab completion implementations for the Python interactive shell that you can just use (see http://docs.python.org/2/library/rlcompleter.html) so you essentially would have to do nothing :)
Python. Yeah looked at that already. That's exactly what I was going to use. On Oct 22, 2013 10:44 AM, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" < notifications@github.com> wrote:
Yes but I mean do you want an interactive Python interpreter? Or make your own mini-language?
For example there are tab completion implementations for the Python interactive shell that you can just use (see http://docs.python.org/2/library/rlcompleter.html) so you essentially would have to do nothing :)
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3122#issuecomment-26809107 .
Ipython + some hooks to make it easier to use the rpc with less typing would be pretty great (e.g. importing the rpc functions at the top level)... maybe some hooks to give node status at the prompt... also an input method for walletpassphrase that doesn't log the passphrase.
It would be sad if we couldn't someday have the same interface in the QT 'console'. :)
From some Google Fu it seems like it would be possible to plug the script into the QT console. For the password it looks like Python has something usable(see http://docs.python.org/2/library/getpass.html).
Could you expand upon what node status should look like?
E.g. blocks count and number of peers. Defined as a user replaceable function, so if the user wants it to show their balance there it would be easy to add it.
So basically just let them rip fields from getinfo. Should this be embedded in the prompt line?
Peers: 8 | Balance: 1.234 BTC > addnode 127.0.0.1 add
Peers: 9 | Balance: 1.234 BTC >
Something like that? Now, what what be awesome is if argument fields were automatically shown when you typed the command.
> sendf[tab]
> sendfrom <fromaccount> <toprimecoinaddress> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment] [comment-to]
And the Debug window in QT doesn't provide this functionality?
Developers are more likely doing work in command line. "tab completion, and inline help, and batch processing, and pipelines of queries, etc" would speed up workflow.
To answer your question, no it doesn't.