Blockchain Programming Part 3: Interacting with our Blockchain using Postman

In this section, we will be discussing how the interaction will be done using Postman, this post is the continuation of the Blockchain Programming series which is a detailed and practical hands-on guide to build your very own Blockchain.

Step 3: Interacting with our Blockchain

You can use plain old cURL or Postman to interact with our API over a network.

Fire up the server:

$ python blockchain.py

* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

Let’s try mining a block by making a GET request to http://localhost:5000/mine:

Also Read: Blockchain Programming Part 1: ‘Building A Blockchain’

Let’s create a new transaction by making a POST request tohttp://localhost:5000/transactions/new with a body containing our transaction structure:

Also Read: Blockchain Programming Part 2: Our Blockchain as an API

If you aren’t using Postman, then you can make the equivalent request using cURL:

$ curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
 "sender": "d4ee26eee15148ee92c6cd394edd974e",
 "recipient": "someone-other-address",
 "amount": 5
}' "http://localhost:5000/transactions/new"

I restarted my server, and mined two blocks, to give 3 in total. Let’s inspect the full chain by requesting http://localhost:5000/chain:

{
  "chain": [
    {
      "index": 1,
      "previous_hash": 1,
      "proof": 100,
      "timestamp": 1506280650.770839,
      "transactions": []
    },
    {
      "index": 2,
      "previous_hash": "c099bc...bfb7",
      "proof": 35293,
      "timestamp": 1506280664.717925,
      "transactions": [
        {
          "amount": 1,
          "recipient": "8bbcb347e0634905b0cac7955bae152b",
          "sender": "0"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "index": 3,
      "previous_hash": "eff91a...10f2",
      "proof": 35089,
      "timestamp": 1506280666.1086972,
      "transactions": [
        {
          "amount": 1,
          "recipient": "8bbcb347e0634905b0cac7955bae152b",
          "sender": "0"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "length": 3
}

Also Read: Blockchain Programming Part 4: Consensus

Featured Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

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