Ethereum in Practice - Quick Start Guide

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Straight and to the point. And also when you know some theory as well. This post assumes that at the very least one knows what Ethereum is and how it works and what an account, an EOA, a contract, gas and transactions areand finally would like to put it all to practice.

There is a bare minimum of basic theory below otherwise. The network is all clients altogether. You know BitTorrent, right? So this is kind of the same, but better.

So, step 1 - install the client. Again, there is no single client, there are multiple to chose from. Ethereum is described in a specification, and multiple ethereum eth commands exist all implementing it. But really, as of the time of this writing, the most popular is gethwhich is my choice as well, and which is the one used throughout this post in the examples. If you see the geth help - you are all set and ready to go! I know, I know, you are anxious to connect to something ethereum eth commands, not just a lonely one-node private network on your computer.

So, to connect to Morden:. This starts a geth client - that is, it will attempt to connect to the test network --testnet and download the blockchain from the network. Yes, all of it, entire blockchain. By the time of this writing it is about 2. You can actually avoid that last option, because ethereum eth commands will create a testnet subdirectory anyway, but I just prefer to keep things explicitly separated.

Or, use the command exactly as above if you are not sure what other options will do, and follow the post to find out about them. Now, wait for the client to download the blockchain. With my computer and my network connection it took me about 30 or 40 minutes.

You can track the progress in the log output, see the imported messages and block numbers to the end. You can find out the latest block number in one of the Ethereum online browsers, for example, like Etherscan for testnet. Note that there are many Ethereum browsers online, but not all of them exist for testnet. This is why I prefer Ethereum eth commands - it exists for both Homestad and Morden. Anyway, by the time of this writing, last block on testnet is Once your client downloads the blockchain - you can use the network to the fullest!

But wait, to create transactions, one needs an account. This is well documented. Stop the client if it is ethereum eth commands and run:. You know all the options here already, and account new is self-explanatory.

But wait a minute - if we want to create a transaction, we need some Ether - some Ether to transfer in ethereum eth commands transaction, and also some Ether to pay for gas. OK, --mine option enables mining, console command launches an interactive console where you could issue commands to the client, and finally we redirect the client log to a file or the console will be bloated with the log otherwise.

Before your client can mine, it needs to generate DAGso you need to wait for it to be generated first. See those Generating DAG: And after it is generated …. You mined a block and you just earned yourself 5 Ether on the testnet!

Yes, Ether you just earned should be now on the account created above. As a side note, know that if you have multiple accounts, you can chose which one to use as the coinbase one - the one to transfer ethereum eth commands rewards to. Remember we ran geth with console command? Go to the console and run:. This should now be at least 5 or actually little more because you are also given Ether for the price of the gas used to mine the blockor more if you mined more than 1 block by this time.

Hey, you are virtually rich now! OK, now that you are reach on Ether in testnetyou can transfer some of it to another account. Hey, why not create another account for yourself and transfer some funds between the two accounts?

This will create a new account. Oh, does it ask for a password now? You can check any account balance without the password, but if you want to make a transaction - you need to unlock an account. Only unlocked accounts can create transactions. And, only the owner can unlock it - you need both a ethereum eth commands and a password to it. For fun, you can find any account mentioned in some transaction on Etherscan, and try checking its balance.

You can do that. Send a transaction from ethereum eth commands There are other ways to unlock accounts, but for now - go on and enter your password. Now, sending account from is unlocked for the entire session in this console. Note the output - it is the transaction number. Now, we need to wait some time for the transaction to get into next mined block. You can monitor the blockchain in the console, but hey, remember you can also monitor the testnet on Etherscan?

Why not give it a try now? You might need to wait some time for a network to mine a block with your transaction. Did you note something special? Did you ethereum eth commands that although to account now contains 1 Ether exactly, your from account ethereum eth commands now ethereum eth commands more than 1 Ether less.

You also paid for a gas used in the transaction. Substitute the transaction number above by yours. What you will see are the transaction details. Among all, you will also see the gas consumed and gas price applied by the network by the time the transaction was effective. Which ethereum eth commands typically a good idea actually. After all, we are developers, we are here to develop stuff, not just use a command line to burn gas.

So, we want to develop and deploy a contract next. So, these are the exact topics I will cover in the coming posts. This post grows little too big, so I prefer to take ethereum eth commands break and see you soon! Here, in this post, following subject are covered: Once installed, make sure it works: Connect to the testnet Ethereum eth commands know, I know, you are anxious to connect to something real, not just a lonely one-node private network on your computer.

So, to connect to Morden:

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These are tools for blockchain developers. The command line tools will allow you to connect your server to or run your application on the Ethereum blockchain — or your own private blockchain. For security purposes , three independent implementations were created for Ethereum. The clients have almost identical functionality, so the one you pick is left to personal choice on platform, language and what your planned use is for the network. If you are building a business that needs to have maximum uptime guarantees to the Ethereum network, we recommend that you run at least one instance of two distinct clients to ensure reliability.

The Go implementation is called Geth. Geth has been audited for security and will be the future basis for the enduser-facing Mist Browser , so if you have experience with web development and are interested in building frontends for dapps, you should experiment with Geth. Download the latest stable binary , extract it, download the zip file, extract geth.

For more, see the full documentation on Windows Geth. For other environments and more instruction, see the full documentation on Geth. The cpp-ethereum documentation has detailed information on Building Windows from Source. The Python implementation is called Pyethapp.

If you are interested in understanding how Ethereum works and how to extend it, the code base of this client is probably the most readable and has a great contract tester library with fast development cycles. It is not meant for high-end usage as performance in this client is not as high priority as clarity and reliability. If you are a Python developer that wants to build decentralized apps or are interested in Ethereum for research or an academic purpose, this is a great client: Geth and Eth are multipurpose command line tools that run a full Ethereum node.

They offer multiple interfaces: For the purposes of this guide, we will focus on the console, a JavaScript environment that contains all of the main features that you probably want.

Depending on your client, paste either of these commands:. Eth might take some time to start up. The first time you start the command line you will be presented with a license.

Before you can use it, you must accept this license, please read it carefully. Read further to find out how to deploy a private test network without spending your ether.

Sometimes you might not want to connect to the live public network; instead you can choose to create your own private testnet. This is very useful if you don't need to test public contracts and want just to try- or develop on the technology. Since you are the only member of your private network you are responsible for finding all blocks, validating all transactions and executing all smart contracts.

This makes development cheaper and easier as you have the ability to flexibly control the inclusion of transactions in your own personal blockchain. Replace with any random number you want to use as the network ID.

It's a good idea to change the content of the genesis block because if someone accidentally connects to your testnet using the real chain, your local copy will be considered a stale fork and updated to the "real" one. Changing the datadir also changes your local copy of the blockchain, otherwise, in order to successfully mine a block, you would need to mine against the difficulty of the last block present in your local copy of the blockchain - which may take several hours.

If you want to create a private network you should, for security reasons, use a different genesis block a database that contains all the transactions from the Ether sales. You can read our announcement blog post on how to generate your file.

In the near future we will provide better ways to get other genesis blocks. These commands prevent anyone who doesn't know your chosen — secret — nonce, network id and genesis file, from connecting to you or providing you with unwanted data. If you want to connect to other peers and create a small private network of multiple computers they will all need to use the same networkid and an identical genesis block. You will also have to help each node find the others.

To do that, first you need your own Node URL:. Which will return your node url - make a note of it and then on the other clients, tell them to add your peer by executing this command:. You don't need to add every client to one another, as once connected, they will share information about any other peers they are connected to. If you are using Eth then simply figure out your IP and execute this command:. If you are running Geth you'll notice that there are many log entries popping up on your console - sometimes while you type.

This is because all warnings and progress information are logged live into your terminal by the client. If you want to save the logs to a file you can view later, use this command:. Geth supports multiple terminal windows and you may start a new one with the logs in one and your console in another.

This will give you the exact same functionality as the original console, but without the clutter. To do this open a new terminal window and input:.

The console has auto completion of commands and command-history support that persists between sessions. You can complete a command by pressing the tab key, geth will then auto complete the current statement or show a list of available completions when multiple completions are possible. You can navigate your command history by using the up and down arrow keys. In order to do anything on an Ethereum network you need ether, and to get it, you will need to create an account.

There are various ways to go around this , but the simplest one is through the console. If you were running Ethereum during the olympic phase or earlier in the development, do not reuse keys generated before the release of the Frontier client software 1. Backup those keys, and create new ones using the Frontier release clients. Pick up a good passphrase and write it down. If you lose the passphrase you used to encrypt your account, you will not be able to access that account.

There are no safety nets. It is NOT possible to access your account without a valid passphrase and there is no "forgot my password" option here. See this XKCD for details. You may create as many or as few accounts as you like. By convention we call the first account you create your primary account. You can see all your accounts with the command:. The ordering of the accounts reflects the time of their creation.

The files are encrypted with your passphrase and should be backed up if they contain any amount of ether. Note, however, if you transfer individual key files, the order of accounts presented may change and you may not end up the same account on the same position. So be aware that relying on account index is sound only as long as you do not copy external keyfiles to your keystore.

All commands on the console are actually in JavaScript, so you can create variables and daisy chain functions. You now have a variable called primaryAccount that you can use in other calls. To get the balance of any account, use the function eth. Your balance should return 0, since you just created it. In order to do the next steps you need to have some ether in your account so you can pay the gas costs.

In the next section you'll learn what gas is, and how you can interact with the network. The command line tools are JavaScript environments, which means you can create functions just like you would in JavaScript. For example, if you want to check the balance of all your accounts at once, use this JavaScript code snippet.

It will iterate over each of your accounts and print their balance in ether, you can use the following code:. Once you executed the line above, all you need to check all of your balances is to call the below function:. If you have never created any contracts in Ethereum before, this is where you should start. Learn More What is Ethereum? Clients For security purposes , three independent implementations were created for Ethereum. Geth The Go implementation is called Geth. Install on Mac Install Homebrew and make sure it's up to date: If you use Apt-get, paste this into the terminal: Install on Windows The cpp-ethereum documentation has detailed information on Building Windows from Source.

Python The Python implementation is called Pyethapp. Other Options Parity Ethereum a Rust implementation by Parity Technologies A Haskell implementation developed by Blockapps If you are interested in developing a light application that will run entirely in a web browser, then we recommend using EthereumJS as a basis.

If you want to create a small hardware project, look into the implementation for the Raspberry Pi If you want to install geth for non-ubuntu linux then we recommend you look into building from source If you want more flexibility on the Mac, try Homebrew Run it Geth and Eth are multipurpose command line tools that run a full Ethereum node.

Depending on your client, paste either of these commands: Eth still has a built-in console, but it will be removed soon. Start it using eth and then use either geth attach if you also have geth or the following npm console. Connecting to a private test net Sometimes you might not want to connect to the live public network; instead you can choose to create your own private testnet.

To do that, first you need your own Node URL: If you are using Eth then simply figure out your IP and execute this command: If you want to save the logs to a file you can view later, use this command: To do this open a new terminal window and input: Learn More on Running a node Backup and restore Connecting to the network Usage examples Creating accounts In order to do anything on an Ethereum network you need ether, and to get it, you will need to create an account. You can see all your accounts with the command: Get the balance of any account All commands on the console are actually in JavaScript, so you can create variables and daisy chain functions.

Try this for example: Check All Balances at once The command line tools are JavaScript environments, which means you can create functions just like you would in JavaScript. It will iterate over each of your accounts and print their balance in ether, you can use the following code: