Using regtest for Bitcoin Testing: A Practical Guide

I see a lot of questions about where to get test bitcoins for testing stuff. People often suggest using regtest instead of the testnet, but honestly, it’s not always clear what regtest really is or how to get it going. So I thought I’d throw together this guide to help anyone get started from the ground up.

Alright, moving on to part two. Here we’re gonna set up the environment for transactions. Sure, you can stick with bitcoin-cli commands, but I’m thinking you want to get into some Python code to really get the hang of regtest for your own projects.

If you’ve been following along, you should have a fully functional regtest environment now. Time to have some fun and create a raw transaction, sign it, and send it all from a Python script. Let’s get coding!

Now, let’s get into some details. One main difference between regtest and testnet/mainnet is the lack of a nice block explorer. But you might still need to check stuff on regtest. So, I wrote another Python script to grab basic info on the regtest chain and transactions.

Awesome guide! Nice to see you included example Python code with outputs.

Thanks for the feedback! I added the setup details like Bitcoin Core version and Python info to the first post, just for clarity.

Cool to see a fellow Belgian sharing this kind of helpful info. Really nice thread!

Thanks for all the info! As a non-coder, I find testnet pretty user-friendly and quick for testing projects.

Hey, quick question. Why can’t I connect two Bitcoin Core instances in regtest mode over the internet? What am I doing wrong?

I’m a bit lost here. I found a PyPI library called bitcoinrpc that's at version 0.7.0 but it’s missing the "authproxy" module. What’s the deal with the bitcoinrpc you mentioned?

That must be the library from jgarzik. Check out this link for it: pypi.org/project/python-bitcoinrpc. It's got the authproxy and was around before this thread started.