Management APIs
Besides the official DApp APIs interface, Pchain has support for additional management APIs. Similar to the DApp APIs, these are also provided using JSON-RPC and follow exactly the same conventions.
Enabling the management APIs
To offer these APIs over the Pchain RPC endpoints, please specify them with the --${interface}api
command line argument (where ${interface}
can be rpc
for the HTTP endpoint and ipc
for the unix socket (Unix) or named pipe (Windows) endpoint).
For example: pchain --ipcapi admin,eth,miner --rpcapi eth,web3 --rpc
Enables the admin, official DApp, and miner API over the IPC interface
Enables the official DApp and web3 API over the HTTP interface
The HTTP RPC interface must be explicitly enabled using the --rpc
flag.
Please note, offering an API over the HTTP (rpc
) interfaces will give everyone access to the APIs that can access this interface (DApps, browser tabs, etc). Be careful which APIs you enable. By default, Pchain enables all APIs over the IPC (ipc
) interface and only the db
, eth
, web3
APIs over the HTTP interfaces.
To determine which APIs an interface provides, the modules
JSON-RPC method can be invoked. For example over an ipc
interface on unix systems:
will give all enabled modules including the version number:
Consuming the management APIs
These additional APIs follow the same conventions as the official DApp APIs. Web3 can be extended and used to consume these additional APIs.
The different functions are split into multiple smaller logically grouped APIs. Examples are given for the JavaScript console but can easily be converted to an RPC request.
2 examples:
Console:
miner.start()
IPC:
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"miner_start","params":[],"id":1}' | nc -U $datadir/pchain/pchain.ipc
HTTP:
curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"miner_start","params":[],"id":74}' localhost:6969/pchain
List of Management APIs
Besides the officially exposed DApp API namespaces (eth
, shh
, web3
), Pchain provides the following extra management API namespaces:
Admin
The admin
API gives you access to several non-standard RPC methods, which will allow you to have a fine-grained control over your Pchain instance, including but not limited to network peer and RPC endpoint management.
Debug
The debug
API gives you access to several non-standard RPC methods, which will allow you to inspect, debug and set certain debugging flags during runtime.
Miner
The miner
API allows you to remote control the node's mining operation and set various mining-specific settings.
Personal
The personal API manages private keys in the key store.
Txpool
The txpool
API gives you access to several non-standard RPC methods to inspect the contents of the transaction pool containing all the currently pending transactions as well as the ones queued for future processing.
Library
admin_addPeer
The addPeer
administrative method requests adding a new remote node to the list of tracked static nodes. The node will try to maintain connectivity to these nodes at all times, reconnecting every once in a while if the remote connection goes down.
The method accepts a single argument, the enode
URL of the remote peer to start tracking and returns a BOOL
indicating whether the peer was accepted for tracking or some error occurred.
Example
admin_datadir
The datadir
administrative property can be queried for the absolute path the running Pchain node currently uses to store all its databases.
Example
admin_nodeInfo
The nodeInfo
administrative property can be queried for all the information known about the running Pchain node at the networking granularity. These include general information about the node itself as a participant of the ÐΞVp2p P2P overlay protocol, as well as specialized information added by each of the running application protocols (e.g. eth
, les
, shh
, bzz
).
Example
admin_peers
The peers
administrative property can be queried for all the information known about the connected remote nodes at the networking granularity. These include general information about the nodes themselves as participants of the ÐΞVp2p P2P overlay protocol, as well as specialized information added by each of the running application protocols (e.g. eth
, les
, shh
, bzz
).
Example
admin_setSolc
The setSolc
administrative method sets the Solidity compiler path to be used by the node when invoking the eth_compileSolidity
RPC method. The Solidity compiler path defaults to /usr/bin/solc
if not set, so you only need to change it for using a non-standard compiler location.
The method accepts an absolute path to the Solidity compiler to use (specifying a relative path would depend on the current – to the user unknown – working directory of Pchain), and returns the version string reported by solc --version
.
Example
admin_startRPC
The startRPC
administrative method starts an HTTP based JSON RPC API webserver to handle client requests. All the parameters are optional:
host
: network interface to open the listener socket on (defaults to"localhost"
)port
: network port to open the listener socket on (defaults to6969
)cors
: cross-origin resource sharing header to use (defaults to""
)apis
: API modules to offer over this interface (defaults to"eth,net,web3"
)
The method returns a boolean flag specifying whether the HTTP RPC listener was opened or not. Please note, only one HTTP endpoint is allowed to be active at any time.
Example
admin_stopRPC
The stopRPC
administrative method closes the currently open HTTP RPC endpoint. As the node can only have a single HTTP endpoint running, this method takes no parameters, returning a boolean whether the endpoint was closed or not.
Example
debug_backtraceAt
Sets the logging backtrace location. When a backtrace location is set and a log message is emitted at that location, the stack of the goroutine executing the log statement will be printed to stderr.
The location is specified as <filename>:<line>
.
Example:
debug_blockProfile
Turns on block profiling for the given duration and writes profile data to disk. It uses a profile rate of 1 for most accurate information. If a different rate is desired, set the rate and write the profile manually using debug_writeBlockProfile
.
debug_cpuProfile
Turns on CPU profiling for the given duration and writes profile data to disk.
debug_dumpBlock
Retrieves the state that corresponds to the block number and returns a list of accounts (including storage and code).
Example
debug_gcStats
Returns GC statistics.
See https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/debug/#GCStats for information about the fields of the returned object.
debug_getBlockRlp
Retrieves and returns the RLP encoded block by number.
References: RLP
debug_goTrace
Turns on Go runtime tracing for the given duration and writes trace data to disk.
debug_memStats
Returns detailed runtime memory statistics.
See https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/#MemStats for information about the fields of the returned object.
debug_seedHash
Fetches and retrieves the seed hash of the block by number
debug_setHead
Sets the current head of the local chain by block number. Note, this is a destructive action and may severely damage your chain. Use with extreme caution.
debug_setBlockProfileRate
Sets the rate (in samples/sec) of goroutine block profile data collection. A non-zero rate enables block profiling, setting it to zero stops the profile. Collected profile data can be written using debug_writeBlockProfile
.
debug_stacks
Returns a printed representation of the stacks of all goroutines. Note that the web3 wrapper for this method takes care of the printing and does not return the string.
debug_startCPUProfile
Turns on CPU profiling indefinitely, writing to the given file.
debug_startGoTrace
Starts writing a Go runtime trace to the given file.
debug_stopCPUProfile
Stops an ongoing CPU profile.
debug_stopGoTrace
Stops writing the Go runtime trace.
debug_traceBlock
The traceBlock
method will return a full stack trace of all invoked opcodes of all transaction that were included included in this block. Note, the parent of this block must be present or it will fail.
References: RLP
Example
debug_traceBlockByNumber
Similar to debug_traceBlock, traceBlockByNumber
accepts a block number and will replay the block that is already present in the database.
References: RLP
debug_traceBlockByHash
Similar to debug_traceBlock, traceBlockByHash
accepts a block hash and will replay the block that is already present in the database.
References: RLP
debug_traceBlockFromFile
Similar to debug_traceBlock, traceBlockFromFile
accepts a file containing the RLP of the block.
References: RLP
debug_traceTransaction
The traceTransaction
debugging method will attempt to run the transaction in the exact same manner as it was executed on the network. It will replay any transaction that may have been executed prior to this one before it will finally attempt to execute the transaction that corresponds to the given hash.
In addition to the hash of the transaction you may give it a secondary optional argument, which specifies the options for this specific call. The possible options are:
disableStorage
:BOOL
. Setting this to true will disable storage capture (default = false).disableMemory
:BOOL
. Setting this to true will disable memory capture (default = false).disableStack
:BOOL
. Setting this to true will disable stack capture (default = false).tracer
:STRING
. Setting this will enable JavaScript-based transaction tracing, described below. If set, the previous four arguments will be ignored.timeout
:STRING
. Overrides the default timeout of 5 seconds for JavaScript-based tracing calls. Valid values are described here.
Example
JavaScript-based tracing
Specifying the tracer
option in the second argument enables JavaScript-based tracing. In this mode, tracer
is interpreted as a JavaScript expression that is expected to evaluate to an object with (at least) two methods, named step
and result
.
step
is a function that takes two arguments, log and db, and is called for each step of the EVM, or when an error occurs, as the specified transaction is traced.
log
has the following fields:
pc
: Number, the current program counterop
: Object, an OpCode object representing the current opcodegas
: Number, the amount of gas remaininggasPrice
: Number, the cost in wei of each unit of gasmemory
: Object, a structure representing the contract's memory spacestack
: array[big.Int], the EVM execution stackdepth
: The execution depthaccount
: The address of the account executing the current operationerr
: If an error occured, information about the error
If err
is non-null, all other fields should be ignored.
For efficiency, the same log
object is reused on each execution step, updated with current values; make sure to copy values you want to preserve beyond the current call. For instance, this step function will not work:
But this step function will:
log.op
has the following methods:
isPush()
- returns true iff the opcode is a PUSHntoString()
- returns the string representation of the opcodetoNumber()
- returns the opcode's number
log.memory
has the following methods:
slice(start, stop)
- returns the specified segment of memory as a byte slicelength()
- returns the length of the memory
log.stack
has the following methods:
peek(idx)
- returns the idx-th element from the top of the stack (0 is the topmost element) as a big.Intlength()
- returns the number of elements in the stack
db
has the following methods:
getBalance(address)
- returns abig.Int
with the specified account's balancegetNonce(address)
- returns a Number with the specified account's noncegetCode(address)
- returns a byte slice with the code for the specified accountgetState(address, hash)
- returns the state value for the specified account and the specified hashexists(address)
- returns true if the specified address exists
The second function, 'result', takes no arguments, and is expected to return a JSON-serializable value to return to the RPC caller.
If the step function throws an exception or executes an illegal operation at any point, it will not be called on any further VM steps, and the error will be returned to the caller.
Note that several values are Golang big.Int objects, not JavaScript numbers or JS bigints. As such, they have the same interface as described in the godocs. Their default serialization to JSON is as a Javascript number; to serialize large numbers accurately call .String()
on them. For convenience, big.NewInt(x)
is provided, and will convert a uint to a Go BigInt.
Usage example, returns the top element of the stack at each CALL opcode only:
debug_verbosity
Sets the logging verbosity ceiling. Log messages with level up to and including the given level will be printed.
The verbosity of individual packages and source files can be raised using debug_vmodule
.
debug_vmodule
Sets the logging verbosity pattern.
Examples
If you want to see messages from a particular Go package (directory) and all subdirectories, use:
If you want to restrict messages to a particular package (e.g. p2p) but exclude subdirectories, use:
If you want to see log messages from a particular source file, use
You can compose these basic patterns. If you want to see all output from peer.go in a package below eth (eth/peer.go, eth/downloader/peer.go) as well as output from package p2p at level <= 5, use:
debug_writeBlockProfile
Writes a goroutine blocking profile to the given file.
debug_writeMemProfile
Writes an allocation profile to the given file. Note that the profiling rate cannot be set through the API, it must be set on the command line using the --memprofilerate
flag.
miner_setExtra
Sets the extra data a miner can include when miner blocks. This is capped at 32 bytes.
miner_setGasPrice
Sets the minimal accepted gas price when mining transactions. Any transactions that are below this limit are excluded from the mining process.
miner_start
Start the CPU mining process with the given number of threads and generate a new DAG if need be.
miner_stop
Stop the CPU mining operation.
miner_setEtherBase
Sets the etherbase, where mining rewards will go.
personal_importRawKey
Imports the given unencrypted private key (hex string) into the key store, encrypting it with the passphrase.
Returns the address of the new account.
personal_listAccounts
Returns all the Pchain account addresses of all keys in the key store.
Example
personal_lockAccount
Removes the private key with given address from memory. The account can no longer be used to send transactions.
personal_newAccount
Generates a new private key and stores it in the key store directory. The key file is encrypted with the given passphrase. Returns the address of the new account.
At the Pchain console, newAccount
will prompt for a passphrase when it is not supplied as the argument.
Example
The passphrase can also be supplied as a string.
personal_unlockAccount
Decrypts the key with the given address from the key store.
Both passphrase and unlock duration are optional when using the JavaScript console. If the passphrase is not supplied as an argument, the console will prompt for the passphrase interactively.
The unencrypted key will be held in memory until the unlock duration expires. If the unlock duration defaults to 300 seconds. An explicit duration of zero seconds unlocks the key until Pchain exits.
The account can be used with eth_sign
and eth_sendTransaction
while it is unlocked.
Examples
Supplying the passphrase and unlock duration as arguments:
If you want to type in the passphrase and stil override the default unlock duration, pass null
as the passphrase.
personal_sendTransaction
Validate the given passphrase and submit a transaction.
The transaction is the same argument as for eth_sendTransaction
and contains the from
address. If the passphrase can be used to decrypt the private key belonging to tx.from
the transaction is verified, signed and send onto the network. The account is not unlocked globally in the node and cannot be used in other RPC calls.
Note, prior to Pchain 1.5, please use personal_signAndSendTransaction
as that was the original introductory name and only later renamed to the current final version.
Examples
personal_sign
The sign method calculates an Pchain specific signature with: sign(keccack256("\x19Pchain Signed Message:\n" + len(message) + message)))
.
By adding a prefix to the message makes the calculated signature recognisable as an Pchain specific signature. This prevents misuse where a malicious DApp can sign arbitrary data (e.g. transaction) and use the signature to impersonate the victim.
See ecRecover to verify the signature.
Examples
personal_ecRecover
ecRecover
returns the address associated with the private key that was used to calculate the signature in personal_sign
.
Examples
txpool_content
The content
inspection property can be queried to list the exact details of all the transactions currently pending for inclusion in the next block(s), as well as the ones that are being scheduled for future execution only.
The result is an object with two fields pending
and queued
. Each of these fields are associative arrays, in which each entry maps an origin-address to a batch of scheduled transactions. These batches themselves are maps associating nonces with actual transactions.
Please note, there may be multiple transactions associated with the same account and nonce. This can happen if the user broadcast mutliple ones with varying gas allowances (or even complerely different transactions).
Example
txpool_inspect
The inspect
inspection property can be queried to list a textual summary of all the transactions currently pending for inclusion in the next block(s), as well as the ones that are being scheduled for future execution only. This is a method specifically tailored to developers to quickly see the transactions in the pool and find any potential issues.
The result is an object with two fields pending
and queued
. Each of these fields are associative arrays, in which each entry maps an origin-address to a batch of scheduled transactions. These batches themselves are maps associating nonces with transactions summary strings.
Please note, there may be multiple transactions associated with the same account and nonce. This can happen if the user broadcast mutliple ones with varying gas allowances (or even complerely different transactions).
Example
txpool_status
The status
inspection property can be queried for the number of transactions currently pending for inclusion in the next block(s), as well as the ones that are being scheduled for future execution only.
The result is an object with two fields pending
and queued
, each of which is a counter representing the number of transactions in that particular state.
Example
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