On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Melvin Carvalho
<melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:

> Firstly, apologies in coming in late to the conversation.  As I am also
> working on a REST API for electronic coins.  Some questions:
>
> 1. Is there a BIP, or some other doc (e.g. gist), outlining the REST output
> e.g. the response format and MIME types.  Or just compile from source?

See the opening post from @jgarzik, it has some documentation on how
to use the API.

It would be nice to have some write-up about the current functionality
in the release notes, but there currently is none.

It's a RPC-side change, not a P2P-side change so it doesn't require a BIP.

> 2. How set in stone is v1 of the the going forward?  PS I support @maaku's
> comments re: "/api/v1/" -- tho I guess it is too late for that now.
> 3. Would there be any support to develop this interface into something that
> would be W3C standards compliant, or reviewed by the REST community.  So for
> example a context can be provided to self document the terms (something I've
> almost completed) and would allow standardization of block explorer and
> bitcoind outputs.  Right now every explorer seems to have a different JSON
> output.

It's not too late, it's not been merged yet.

Though a W3C standard takes a long time to pan out, and it may be more
useful to have this available rather than wait for the API to be
standardized (which means this will need to be postponed at least one
version). As you say, a new interface be added later under another
URI.

Note that we're only interested in exposing read-only, public data
which is already available in Bitcoin Core's internals.
We're not aiming to add a fully-fledged block explorer with (say)
address indexes. Although that could be part of the standard if it
allows implementations to support just a subset.

Anyhow - please coordinate this with Jeff Garzik, it's better to work
together here.

Wladimir