Bitcoin Address

Represents a bitcoin address. Addresses are the most popular way to make bitcoin transactions. See the official Bitcoin Wiki for technical background information.

Instantiate an Address

To be able to receive bitcoins, an address is needed, but in order to spend them a private key is necessary. Please take a look at the PrivateKey docs for more information about exporting and saving a key.

var privateKey = new PrivateKey();
var address = privateKey.toAddress();

You can also instantiate an Address from a String, PublicKey, or HDPublicKey, in case you are not the owner of the private key.

// from a string
var address = Address.fromString('mwkXG8NnB2snbqWTcpNiK6qqGHm1LebHDc');

// a default network address from a public key
var publicKey = PublicKey(privateKey);
var address = new Address(publicKey);
// alternative interface
var address = Address.fromPublicKey(publicKey);

// a testnet address from a public key
var publicKey = new PublicKey(privateKey);
var address = new Address(publicKey, Networks.testnet);

A pay-to-script-hash multisignature Address can be instantiated from an array of PublicKeys.

// a 2-of-3 address from public keys
var p2shAddress = new Address([publicKey1, publicKey2, publicKey3], 2);

Validating an Address

The main use that we expect you’ll have for the Address class in Bitcore is validating that an address is a valid one, what type of address it is (you may be interested on knowing if the address is a simple “pay to public key hash” address or a “pay to script hash” address) and what network does the address belong to.

The code to do these validations looks like this:

// validate an address
if (Address.isValid(input){
  ...
}

// validate that an input field is a valid testnet address
if (Address.isValid(input, Networks.testnet){
  ...
}

// validate that an input field is a valid livenet pubkeyhash
if (Address.isValid(input, Networks.livenet, Address.PayToPublicKeyHash){
  ...
}

// get the specific validation error that can occurred
var error = Address.getValidationError(input, Networks.testnet);
  if (error) {
    // handle the error
  }
}

The errors are listed in the generated file in the errors folder. There’s a structure to errors defined in the spec.js file.