How to get last transactions made to a non-wallet bitcoin address?

Question

I know I can rebuild my block index by setting txindex=1 in my bitcoin.conf file and restart bitcoind with -reindex so that I can view non-wallet transactions using:

bitcoind getrawtransaction a93a668d9332e21d51380c7251bbf5ad47295ca9795e0ad6f2fe8d63b76af9aa 1

I'm currently in another situation however, in which I only got the recipient address. So my question is, can I list all transactions that have been received by a certain address, preferably including the confirmations that this transaction has gotten?

All tips are welcome!

Answer 1

As of version 0.9, bitcoind doesn't allow you to explicitly search for transactions by address. You should look into using an API like the one provided by blockchain.info.

For example, this URL will return a JSON string with all transactions associated with the address 1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH: https://blockchain.info/rawaddr/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH

Information on multiple addresses can be pulled from this API call: http://blockchain.info/multiaddr?active=1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH|13Df4x5nQo7boLWHxQCbJzobN5gUNT65Hh

More information about the blockchain.info API is available on their website. I need over 10 reputation points to be able to post more than 2 links, otherwise I'd give you a direct link to that. Google "bitcoin.info api" to find more info about their API.