Eth Tools

Command line tools for easy interaction with Ethereum nodes.

At the moment:

• Ethereum node detection
• account balance inspector

more coming as needs arise.

Prerequisites

Summary: node.js and git. You can skip to the next section if you already have these.

• node.js spectacular platform. LTS (Long-term support) is the right choice for most.

• git incredible version control (needed in the background to install some dependencies on first install).

Optional: if you want easy switching between different node.js versions in the future and you are using unix based systems (macOS, Linux), you can install node.js via fantastic n (don't download it from nodejs.org in this case).

You can also install both node.js and git via Homebrew friendly package manager for macOS. n is still recommended for node.js though.

npm (Node Package Manager) is installed automatically with node.js install (just FYI).

Install

npm install -g eth-tools

Run

eth

Help:

eth -h

Configure

Create or edit the file ~/.eth-tools.json (Linux/MacOS: /home/[user], Windows: c:\Users\[user]) containing instructions where to search for Ethereum nodes.

Config file example

{
  "clients": ["geth", "parity", "testrpc"],
  "nodes": {
    "localhost": [8545, 8600, 8700],
    "some_host.com": [8545]
  }
}

Options

Usage: eth [options] [command]


  Commands:

    info               show the accessible nodes info (nodes are specified in config file)
    balance [address]  get the balance on a given address

  Eth command line tools

  Options:

    -h, --help         output usage information
    -V, --version      output the version number
    --host <host>      [Config]: Host of Ethereum node
    -p, --port <port>  [Config]: Port on which the node is running

Note

If you run eth without this file present, it will create an example file for your convenience.

Notes

• Ethereum nodes have to have RPC enabled on the given port (parity has by default, geth doesn't - use --rpc)