@polkadot/api-cli

@polkadot/api-cli

A simple cli interface to the @polkadot/api.

Usage

Commands are of the form,

yarn run:api [options] <type> <...params>

Where type is the type of query to be made, this takes the form of <type>.<section>.<method> where type is one of consts, derive, query, rpc tx (mapping to the API) and the section and method are available calls.

For instance to make a query to retrieve Alice's balances, you can do

yarn run:api query.system.account 5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY

To do the same, running as a subscription and streaming results

yarn run:api query.system.account 5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY --sub

To make a transfer from Alice to Bob, the following can be used -

yarn run:api tx.balances.transfer 5FHneW46xGXgs5mUiveU4sbTyGBzmstUspZC92UhjJM694ty 12345 --seed "//Alice"

You can pass complex parameters as JSON which will be automatically parsed into the correct data structure

yarn run:api --sudo tx.validatorManager.registerValidators '["5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY","5FHneW46xGXgs5mUiveU4sbTyGBzmstUspZC92UhjJM694ty"]'

Files as Parameters

It is often desirable to include large binary blobs as transaction parameters. These blobs are often already present in the local filesystem. Therefore, the CLI has special syntax to make life easier: any transaction parameter whose initial character is @ is treated as a path to a binary file; its contents are automatically converted into appropriate hex form before sending the tx.

The sudo example demonstrates this.

Sudo

Some transactions require superuser access. For example, to change the runtime code, you can do

yarn run:api --sudo --seed "//Alice" tx.system.setCode @test.wasm

In all cases when sudoing, the seed provided should be that of the superuser. For most development nets, that is "//Alice".

Global Installation

$ yarn global add @polkadot/api-cli
$ polkadot-js-api ...

Other options

The --ws param can be used to connect to other Websocket endpoints, when submitting transactions, you can use the --seed <seed> to specify an account seed. To read documentation on a call, use the --info command.

To specify types for a specific chain, you can use the --types <types.json> param, injecting the specified types into the API on construction.

To specify RPC types for a specific chain, you can use the --rpc <rpc.json> param, injecting the specified RPC types into the API on construction.

For a complete list of available commands, you can use --help

Changelog

0.63.6 Apr 17, 2025

Changes:

• Updated polkadot deps(#608)