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Managing accounts

Introduction​

This tutorial walks you through the following steps:

  • Generate an account
  • Review account info
  • Review account history
  • Get account balances
note

This tutorial is NodeJS-specific. You can review the accounts guide to understand how to manage Stacks 2.0 accounts using a different language/framework.

Prerequisites​

You will need NodeJS 8.12.0 or higher to complete this tutorial. You can verify your installation by opening up your terminal and run the following command:

node --version

Step 1: Install libraries​

First, install all the required libraries:

npm install --save @stacks/transactions @stacks/blockchain-api-client cross-fetch
info

The TypeScript API client is generated from the OpenAPI specification (openapi-generator). You can use the generator to create Stacks API clients for many other languages.

Step 2: Generate an account​

To get started, generate a new, random Stacks 2.0 private key:

const { fetch } = require("cross-fetch");
const {
  makeRandomPrivKey,
  privateKeyToString,
  getAddressFromPrivateKey,
  TransactionVersion,
} = require("@stacks/transactions");
const {
  AccountsApi,
  FaucetsApi,
  Configuration,
} = require("@stacks/blockchain-api-client");

const apiConfig = new Configuration({
  fetchApi: fetch,
  // for mainnet, replace `testnet` with `mainnet`
  basePath: "https://stacks-node-api.testnet.stacks.co",
});

const privateKey = makeRandomPrivKey();
note

The preceding code also imports methods required for the next steps, including API configuration for the client library usage.

Step 3: Review account info​

With the private key, you can review account details. First, we need to derive the Stacks address from the private key. Then, we can use the AccountsApi class to get the account details:

const stacksAddress = getAddressFromPrivateKey(
  privateKeyToString(privateKey),
  TransactionVersion.Testnet // remove for Mainnet addresses
);

const accounts = new AccountsApi(apiConfig);

async function getAccountInfo() {
  const accountInfo = await accounts.getAccountInfo({
    principal: stacksAddress,
  });

  return accountInfo;
}
note

A "principal" is any entity that can have a token balance. Find more details in the Principals guide.

The API will respond with a balance, nonce (starting at zero), and respective proofs:

{
  balance: '0x00000000000000000000000000000000',
  nonce: 0,
  balance_proof: '',
  nonce_proof: ''
}

The balance property represents the Stacks token balance, as hex-encoded string of an unsigned 128-bit integer (big-endian). It is not easy to consume the balance property in this format. To simplify that, and to obtain all balances for all tokens (Stacks/STX, fungible, and non-fungible), check out step 5.

Disable proofs​

Proofs, provided as hex-encoded strings, can be removed from the responses by setting the proof parameter:

async function getAccountInfoWithoutProof() {
  const accountInfo = await accounts.getAccountInfo({
    principal: stacksAddress,
    proof: 0,
  });

  return accountInfo;
}

Step 4: Review account history​

The following step requires associated accounts transactions. For simplicity, run the faucet for the new account:

async function runFaucetStx() {
  const faucets = new FaucetsApi(apiConfig);

  const faucetTx = await faucets.runFaucetStx({
    address: stacksAddress,
  });

  return faucetTx;
}

The API will respond with a new transaction ID and confirmation that the faucet run was successful:

{
  success: true,
  txId: '0x5b3d9b47c8f0a3c161868c37d94977b3b0a507558a542fd9499b597bfc799d11',
  txRaw: '80800000000400164247d6f2b425ac5771423ae6c80c754f717...'
}
note

Wait a few minutes for the transaction to complete. You can review the status using the Explorer, by navigating to the following URL: https://explorer.stacks.co/txid/<txid>.

Assuming the faucet transaction was successful, you can review the account history. We are expecting at least one transaction to show up in the account history.

async function getAccountTransactions() {
  const history = await accounts.getAccountTransactions({
    principal: stacksAddress,
  });

  return history;
}

The API will respond with a paginatable list of transactions associated with the account:

{
  limit: 20,
  offset: 0,
  total: 1,
  results: [
    {
      tx_id: '0x89ee63c0',
      tx_type: 'token_transfer',
      fee_rate: '180',
      sender_address: 'STB44HYPYAT2BB2QE513NSP81HTMYWBJP02HPGK6',
      sponsored: false,
      post_condition_mode: 'deny',
      tx_status: 'success',
      block_hash: '0x167662a4e',
      block_height: 2951,
      burn_block_time: 1598910912,
      burn_block_time_iso: '2020-08-31T21:55:12.000Z',
      canonical: true,
      tx_index: 1,
      tx_result: {"hex":"0x03","repr":"true"},
      token_transfer: {
        recipient_address:"STW617CAFYNFQG6G470DNWW4V56XAY7125S3Z6RK",
        amount:"500000",
        memo:"0x466175636574000000"
        },
      events: [{ ... }]
    }
  ]
}

Please review the API reference for property definitions and details.

Handle pagination​

To make API responses more compact, lists returned by the API are paginated. For lists, the response body includes:

ParameterDescriptionDefault
limitThe number of list items returned20
offsetThe number of elements skipped0
totalThe number of all available list items0
resultsArray of list items (length of array equals the set limit)[]

In order to paginate throughout the full result set, we can use the limit and offset request properties. Here is an example where we request transactions 50-100 for an account:

async function getAccountTransactions() {
  const history = await accounts.getAccountTransactions({
    principal: stacksAddress,
    limit: 50,
    offset: 50,
  });

  return history;
}

Step 5: Get account balances​

As mentioned above, any Stacks address can have a variety of tokens and associated balances. In order to get balances for all Stacks, fungible, and non-fungible tokens, we can use the getAccountBalance method:

async function getAccountBalance() {
  const balances = await accounts.getAccountBalance({
    principal: stacksAddress,
  });

  return balances;
}

The API will respond with the following breakdown of token balances:

{
  stx: {
    balance: '500000',
    total_sent: '0',
    total_received: '500000'
  },
  fungible_tokens: {},
  non_fungible_tokens: {}
}
note

The balance field is denoted in micro-STX units. 1,000,000 micro-STX are worth 1 Stacks (STX) token.

In the preceding response, the current Stacks (STX) balance is 500000 micro-STX, or 0.5 Stacks (STX) token.