libbtc Samples

Best Practices

Initialize the library

The library needs to keep some global state and initialize its dependencies. You must therefore initialize the library before working with it

ecc_start(); //will initialize crypto environment

Usually you don't need to call the shutdown function as the operating system will take care of reclaiming resources, but if your application uses libgit2 in some areas which are not usually active, you can use

ecc_stop();

to ask the library to clean up the global state. The cleanup will be performed once there have been the same number of calls to btc_stop() as there were for btc_start().

Transactions

deserialize and serialize transactions.

//char *hex_tx // containing some hex transaction data
btc_tx* tx = btc_tx_new();
btc_tx_deserialize(hex_tx, strlen(hex_tx), tx);

cstring* str = cstr_new_sz(1024);
btc_tx_serialize(str, tx);

Copy transaction

btc_tx* tx_copy = btc_tx_new();
btc_tx_copy(tx_copy, tx);

Get the signature hash

uint8_t sighash[32];
memset(sighash, 0, 32); //empty the hash
cstring* script = cstr_new_buf(script_data, outlen); //a input script, see script doc
btc_tx_sighash(tx, script, 0, SIGHASH_ALL_, sighash);

//your hash will be stored in `sighash`

Adding outputs. Currently the system will detect P2PKS and P2SH output addresses and sets the appropriate script.

//&btc_chain_test is a pointer to the global chain structs (see chain.h)
btc_tx_add_address_out(tx, &btc_chain_test, 876543210, "2NFoJeWNrABZQ3YCWdbX9wGEnRge7kDeGzQ");

Freeing

Anytime libbtc fills in a non-const pointer for you, you should be using a _free call to release the resource.

btc_tx *tx = NULL;
btc_tx_init(tx);
/* … */
btc_tx_free(tx);