How To Get Block Information

Goal

Query infomation about a block.

Before you begin

Make sure to meet the following requirements:

Familiarize with the cleos get block command and its parameters.
Install the currently supported version of cleos.

Note

cleos is bundled with the EOSIO software. Installing EOSIO will also install cleos.

Understand what a block is and its role in the blockchain.
Understand the block lifecycle in the EOSIO consensus protocol.

Steps

Perform the step below:

Retrieve full or partial information about a block:

cleos get block [--info] <block_number_or_id>

Where block_number_or_id is the specified block number or block ID and --info is an optional parameter to retrieve a partial subset of the block information.

Some examples are provided below:

Query the testnet to retrieve full block information about block number 48351112 or block ID 02e1c7888a92206573ae38d00e09366c7ba7bc54cd8b7996506f7d2a619c43ba:

Example Output

cleos -u https://api.testnet.eos.io get block 48351112

{
  "timestamp": "2021-01-28T17:58:59.500",
  "producer": "inith",
  "confirmed": 0,
  "previous": "02e1c78787ff4d4ce6124831b936bb4ef6015e470868a535f1c6e04f3afed8a1",
  "transaction_mroot": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "action_mroot": "1bf9d17b5a951cbb6d0a8324e4039744db4137df498abd53046ea26fa74d73c9",
  "schedule_version": 1,
  "new_producers": null,
  "producer_signature": "SIG_K1_JxFfxGA1wZx9LCVjbrBb5nxTuJai7RUSiwRXyY866fYvZZyRtdmQFn9KJCqVHFAiYEsJpDb6dhTmHNDwipJm4rDiyhEmGa",
  "transactions": [],
  "id": "02e1c7888a92206573ae38d00e09366c7ba7bc54cd8b7996506f7d2a619c43ba",
  "block_num": 48351112,
  "ref_block_prefix": 3493375603
}

Query the testnet to retrieve full block information about block ID 02e1c7888a92206573ae38d00e09366c7ba7bc54cd8b7996506f7d2a619c43ba:

Example Output

cleos -u https://api.testnet.eos.io get block 02e1c7888a92206573ae38d00e09366c7ba7bc54cd8b7996506f7d2a619c43ba

{
  "timestamp": "2021-01-28T17:58:59.500",
  "producer": "inith",
  "confirmed": 0,
  "previous": "02e1c78787ff4d4ce6124831b936bb4ef6015e470868a535f1c6e04f3afed8a1",
  "transaction_mroot": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "action_mroot": "1bf9d17b5a951cbb6d0a8324e4039744db4137df498abd53046ea26fa74d73c9",
  "schedule_version": 1,
  "new_producers": null,
  "producer_signature": "SIG_K1_JxFfxGA1wZx9LCVjbrBb5nxTuJai7RUSiwRXyY866fYvZZyRtdmQFn9KJCqVHFAiYEsJpDb6dhTmHNDwipJm4rDiyhEmGa",
  "transactions": [],
  "id": "02e1c7888a92206573ae38d00e09366c7ba7bc54cd8b7996506f7d2a619c43ba",
  "block_num": 48351112,
  "ref_block_prefix": 3493375603
}

Query the local chain to retrieve partial block information about block number 1:

Example Output

cleos get block --info 1

{
  "block_num": 1,
  "ref_block_num": 1,
  "id": "0000000130d70e94e0022fd2fa035cabb9e542c34ea27f572ac90b5a7aa3d891",
  "timestamp": "2018-03-02T12:00:00.000",
  "producer": "",
  "confirmed": 1,
  "previous": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "transaction_mroot": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "action_mroot": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "schedule_version": 0,
  "producer_signature": "SIG_K1_111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111116uk5ne",
  "ref_block_prefix": 3526296288
}

Note that the partial block information excludes the variable fields new_producers, header_extensions, transactions, or block_extensions.