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The following commands provide useful miscellaneous tools:

  • chifra explore a quick way to open a blockchain explorer,
  • ethslurp an older tool that lets you call data from Etherscan. (This has issues of centralization and data quality, see explanation in its section).

Note: some of these tools, such as ethslurp, require an Etherscan key. Follow these instructions to add a key to your config.

Each data structure is created by one or more tools which are detailed below.

Abi

An ABI describes an Application Binary Interface – in other words, the Function and Event signatures for a given smart contract. Along with Names the use of ABIs goes a very long way towards making your Ethereum data much more understandable.

Similar to names of addresses, ABI files are not available on-chain which means they must be acquired somewhere. Unfortunately, the Ethereum community has not yet understood that Etherscan is not a good place to store this very important information. For this reason, TrueBlocks uses Etherscan to acquire ABI files and therefore one needs to get an Etherscan API key to use this function.

The following commands produce and manage Abis:

Abis consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
address the address for the ABI address
name the filename of the ABI (likely the smart contract address) string
path the folder holding the abi file string
fileSize the size of this file on disc int64
lastModDate the last update date of the file string
isKnown true if this is the ABI for a known smart contract or protocol bool
isEmpty true if the ABI could not be found (and won’t be looked for again) bool
nFunctions if verbose, the number of functions in the ABI int64
nEvents if verbose, the number of events in the ABI int64
hasConstructor if verbose and the abi has a constructor, then true, else false bool
hasFallback if verbose and the abi has a fallback, then true, else false bool
functions the functions for this address Function[]

Notes

See the chifra abis command line for information about getting an Etherscan key.

Function

ABI files are derived from the Solidity source code of a smart contract by extracting the canonical function and event signatures in a JSON structure. The function signatures are hashed (using keccak) into four-byte encodings for functions and 32-byte encodings for events. Because the blockchain only deals with byte data, TrueBlocks needs a way to decode the bytes back into the human-readable function and event signatures. We call this process --articulate. Most TrueBlocks commands provide an --articulate option. See the commands themselves for more information.

The following commands produce and manage Functions:

Functions consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
name the name of the interface string
type the type of the interface, either ’event’ or ‘function’ string
signature the canonical signature of the interface string
encoding the signature encoded with keccak string
inputs the input parameters to the function, if any Parameter[]
outputs the output parameters to the function, if any Parameter[]

Parameter

Parameters are a constituent part of a Function or Event. The parameters of a function are each individual value passed into the function. Along with the function’s name, the parameter types (once canonicalized) are used to create a function’s four byte signature (or an event’s 32-byte signature). Parameters are important to TrueBlocks because we use them as part of the ABI decoding and the --articulate process to convert the blockchain’s bytes into human-readable text.

The following commands produce and manage Parameters:

Parameters consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
type the type of this parameter string
name the name of this parameter string
strDefault the default value of this parameter, if any string
indexed true if this parameter is indexed bool
internalType for composite types, the internal type of the parameter string
components for composite types, the parameters making up the composite Parameter[]

Slurp

THIS SHOULD BE ETHERSCAN DATA RELATED, BUT IT’S NOT TIED IN, SO IT DOESN’T DO ANYTHING The traceFilter is an internal data structure used to query using the chifra traces --filter command. Its use may, in the future, be expanded for other use cases. Note that all fields are optional, but not all may be empty at the same time.

The following commands produce and manage Slurps:

Slurps consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
hash the hash of the transaction hash
blockHash the hash of the block containing this transaction hash
blockNumber the number of the block blknum
transactionIndex the zero-indexed position of the transaction in the block txnum
nonce sequence number of the transactions sent by the sender value
timestamp the Unix timestamp of the object timestamp
date the timestamp as a date (calculated) datetime
from address from which the transaction was sent address
to address to which the transaction was sent address
value the amount of wei sent with this transactions wei
ether if –ether is specified, the value in ether (calculated) ether
gas the maximum number of gas allowed for this transaction gas
gasPrice the number of wei per unit of gas the sender is willing to spend gas
input byte data either containing a message or funcational data for a smart contracts. See the –articulate bytes
hasToken true if the transaction is token related, false otherwise bool
articulatedTx if present, the function that was called in the transaction Function
compressedTx truncated, more readable version of the articulation (calculated) string
isError true if the transaction ended in error, false otherwise bool

Message

The Message type is used in various places to return information about a command. For example, when using the chifra names --autoname feature in the SDK, a Message type is returned.

The following commands produce and manage Messages:

Messages consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
msg the message string
num a number if needed int64

Count

Shows the number of timestamps in the timestamps database.

The following commands produce and manage Counts:

Counts consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
count the number of items in the given database uint64

Destination

A Destination is an enhanced url used by chifra explore it may be a URL to a block on the explorer, a transaction hash, or an address.

The following commands produce and manage Destinations:

Destinations consist of the following fields:

Field Description Type
term the term used to produce the url string
termType the type of the term DestType
url the url produced string
source the option that produced the url string

Base types

This documentation mentions the following basic data types.

Type Description Notes
address an ‘0x’-prefixed 20-byte hex string lowercase
blknum an alias for a uint64
bool either true, false, 1, or 0
bytes an arbitrarily long string of bytes
datetime a JSON formatted date as a string
ether a big number float as a string
gas a 64-bit unsigned integer
hash an ‘0x’-prefixed 32-byte hex string lowercase
int64 a 64-bit signed integer
string a normal character string
timestamp a 64-bit unsigned integer Unix timestamp
txnum an alias for a uint64
uint64 a 64-bit unsigned integer
value an alias for a 64-bit unsigned integer
wei an unsigned big number as a string

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