Query unspent outputs for arbitrary address

Question

Is there a way to query all unspent outputs for an arbitrary address (which I don't have the private key for), without resorting to a third party service (like Blockchain.info).

bitcoind apparently only lets you do that with addresses that belong to your wallet, even though it internally maintains the list of all unspent transaction outputs.

Answer 1

They're planning to add 'watch-only addresses' to bitcoind; https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/4045

• this is already the 4th pull request, they've been working on it for a long time, should be getting into the next version or something I'd guess

once that is in you can get this kind of data out of the basic wallet, until then you'll need to use a blockexplorer or a 'better' wallet (eg Armory) that supports watch-only addresses.