Hi there,
I've always been interested in making trading bots, however before I had heard of bitcoins and MtGox, I never ended up doing it because the fees needed to do it always seemed prohibitively high, even for Oanda's forex platform. Now that I have found MtGox however, I am now looking forward to automated trading.
As anyone using MtGox's API will know, documentation is only avaiable on the bitcoin wiki (
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP), and there are three versions:
Version 0 - The first API, currently deprecated, and soon to be dropped
Version 1 - The most widely used and most well documented
Version 2 - The most recent, though information is sparse
Even for version 1, documentation is far from complete or consistent. I have focused my attention of version 2, however, as from what I have read, MtGox is working to overhaul their API, and so I want to start out on the most recent version, so that I won't have to worry about deprecation of version 1 in the near future. For this reason, I have started a project to document version 2. Although there is published documentation, it only lists most of the methods, and most of them don't even have a description, let alone usage information. Details on how to access the API, including the relevance of the nonce value and the rest key and sign needed, are hard to find, and is mostly achieved through example. I'm sure there is more information distributed throughout this forum and available in IRC chatrooms, however I don't think this is an ideal situation.
That is why I have spent the last few days compiling all the information I have found and worked out into an unofficial document. I intend to eventually cover all the API methods consistently, in as much detail as possible, however I also plan to make it brief, comprehensible, and unambiguous. Although I currently have only covered some of the methods, I have made a lot of headway.
https://bitbucket.org/nitrous/mtgox-api/overviewThe above is the result of my efforts. As you can see, it explains how the API works, what you need to access it, details of the terms and data used, including currency specifics. I have also given a short example of how to access the API using a key and secret. You will also notice that I have documented the most useful methods for a trading bot. Each method includes a short description, any known arguments it accepts (if applicable), an example of its use if I have been able to obtain one, and bullet points explaining the nuances of each.
I plan to continue extending this as I come across more information, and as I gain experience. I don't currently have any bitcoins in my MtGox account to give examples for the actual trading methods yet (I'm waiting for a significant dip in price), but I'm sure in the near future I will be able to do this as well. Whilst I can't promise regular updates as I am a student and sometimes have a lot of other work, I hope to eventually complete this in its entirety (unless, of course, official documentation comes along with more information, and makes this project obsolete).
Thank you for taking the time to read this, hopefully this will be useful to some of you. Please give me your opinions, and any suggestions for improvements you may have
TLDR: I have started work on unofficial documentation for version 2 of MtGox's API here:
https://bitbucket.org/nitrous/mtgox-api/overview. It is not yet complete, but it is freely available for all to use. I welcome your opinions.