Reading from Network

Read data from the Solana network by fetching different accounts. This section will help you understand the structure of Solana accounts. Each Solana account has a unique address that is used to locate its corresponding on-chain data. Accounts contain either state data or an executable program.

Fetch a wallet account

A wallet is an account owned by the System Program. Wallets are primarily used to hold SOL and sign transactions. When SOL is sent to a new address for the first time, a system account is automatically created.

The example below generates a new keypair, requests SOL to fund the new public key address, and retrieves the account data for the newly funded wallet.

Fetch account

import { Keypair, Connection, LAMPORTS_PER_SOL } from "@solana/web3.js";

const keypair = Keypair.generate();
console.log(`Public Key: ${keypair.publicKey}`);

const connection = new Connection("http://localhost:8899", "confirmed");

// Funding an address with SOL automatically creates an account
const signature = await connection.requestAirdrop(
  keypair.publicKey,
  LAMPORTS_PER_SOL
);
await connection.confirmTransaction(signature, "confirmed");

const accountInfo = await connection.getAccountInfo(keypair.publicKey);
console.log(JSON.stringify(accountInfo, null, 2));

Console

Click to execute the code.

Fetch account

import { Keypair, Connection, LAMPORTS_PER_SOL } from "@solana/web3.js";

const keypair = Keypair.generate();
console.log(`Public Key: ${keypair.publicKey}`);

const connection = new Connection("http://localhost:8899", "confirmed");

// Funding an address with SOL automatically creates an account
const signature = await connection.requestAirdrop(
  keypair.publicKey,
  LAMPORTS_PER_SOL
);
await connection.confirmTransaction(signature, "confirmed");

const accountInfo = await connection.getAccountInfo(keypair.publicKey);
console.log(JSON.stringify(accountInfo, null, 2));

Console

Click to execute the code.

When you fetch a wallet account, the response includes the fields shown in the example output on the right.

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}

The data field contains the account's data stored as bytes. For wallet accounts, this field is empty (0 bytes).

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}

The executable field indicates whether the account's data field contains executable program code. For wallet accounts this field is false.

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}

The lamports field contains the account's SOL balance, in lamports.

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}

The owner field shows the program that owns the account. For wallets, the owner is always the System Program, with the address 11111111111111111111111111111111.

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}

The rentEpoch field is a legacy field from a deprecated rent mechanism. (This field is included for backward compatibility.)

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}

The space field shows the number of bytes contained in the data field. This is not a field in the Account type itself, but is included in the response.

In this example, the space field is 0 because the data field contains 0 bytes of data.

Example output

{
  "data": {
    "type": "Buffer",
    "data": []
  },
  "executable": false,
  "lamports": 1000000000,
  "owner": "11111111111111111111111111111111",
  "rentEpoch": 0,
  "space": 0
}