Get Account Info

In preparation for querying detailed information about an account, the first step is to create a Hashgraph Client object. The Client object orchestrates the request construction and communication with the hedera network. It requires a small amount of configuration when created. At a minimum to retrieve the information, the client must be configured with a Gateway and Payer. The Gateway object represents the internet network address and account for the node processing requests and the Payer Account represents the account that will sign and pay for the query. The Payer consists of two things: and Address identifying the account paying transaction fees for the request; and a Signatory holding the signing key associated with the Payer account. Retrieving information about an account is not free, the network requires a nominal payment of a few tinybars from the paying account to process the request. After creating and configuring the client object, the GetAccountInfoAsync method submits the request to the network and returns an AccountInfo object describing the details of the account, including its balance in tinybars. The following code example illustrates a small program performing these actions:

class Program
{
    static async Task Main(string[] args)
    {                                                 // For Example:
        var gatewayUrl = args[0];                     //   2.testnet.hedera.com:50211
        var gatewayAccountNo = long.Parse(args[1]);   //   5 (gateway node 0.0.5)
        var payerAccountNo = long.Parse(args[2]);     //   20 (account 0.0.20)
        var payerPrivateKey = Hex.ToBytes(args[3]);   //   302e0201... (48 byte Ed25519 private in hex)
        var queryAccountNo = long.Parse(args[4]);     //   2300 (account 0.0.2300)
        try
        {
            await using var client = new Client(ctx =>
            {
                ctx.Gateway = new Gateway(gatewayUrl, 0, 0, gatewayAccountNo);
                ctx.Payer = new Address(0, 0, payerAccountNo);
                ctx.Signatory = new Signatory(payerPrivateKey);
            });
            var account = new Address(0, 0, queryAccountNo);
            var info = await client.GetAccountInfoAsync(account);
            Console.WriteLine($"Account:               0.0.{info.Address.AccountNum}");
            Console.WriteLine($"Smart Contract ID:     {info.SmartContractId}");
            Console.WriteLine($"Proxy Address:         0.0.{info.Proxy.AccountNum}");
            Console.WriteLine($"Balance:               {info.Balance:#,#} tb");
            Console.WriteLine($"Receive Sig. Required: {info.ReceiveSignatureRequired}");
            Console.WriteLine($"Auto-Renewal Period:   {info.AutoRenewPeriod}");
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Console.Error.WriteLine(ex.Message);
            Console.Error.WriteLine(ex.StackTrace);
        }
    }
}

One should note that to create a Signatory associated with the payer account, one does need to have access to the account’s private key(s) to sign the transaction authorizing payment to the network query request. For the account being queried, only the address number need be known.

While outside the scope of this example, it is possible to create a signatory that invokes an external method to sign the transaction instead; this is useful for scenarios where the private key is held outside of the system using this library. Thru this mechanism it is possible for the library to never see a private signing key.