Is there a way I can get all pending transactions to a given address/contract? I could get the confirmed transactions by exploring transactions in recent blocks. But how would I go about getting current pending and unconfirmed transactions to a specific address/contract?
For example, I can go to https://etherscan.io/address/ and I can see "(pending) 6 seconds ago". How does etherscan.io determine this? I'd like to do this myself. Do I need to run a node? A friend mentioned something about a listener, but i'm not sure if that's the right direction.
******* Edit ********
This etherscan API doesn't seem to return any pending transactions. Only ones in a block. But their website clearly shows pending transactions…
http://api.etherscan.io/api?module=account&action=txlist&address=0x1234.....5678&startblock=4271910&endblock=99999999&sort=asc&apikey=KEYGOESHERE
Best Answer
Have a look here Understanding transactions better
Full nodes listen and broadcast transactions. As a full node you receive and can display the pending transactions in your transaction pool. That's what etherscan does. Maybe you can't access it through their API, their choice.
So you can get some of the pending transactions as a node, but you don't get to choose, and most likely some transactions will have been included in a block before they reach you in a pending state.