Sending Ether Tutorial

Sending ether

Interative JS console

The basic way of sending a simple transaction of ether with the Javascript console is as follows:

> eth.sendTransaction({from:sender, to:receiver, value: amount})

Using the built-in JavaScript interpreter, you can easily set variables to hold these values. For example:

> var sender = eth.accounts[0];
> var receiver = eth.accounts[1];
> var amount = web3.toWei(0.01, "ether")

Alternatively, you can compose a transaction in a single line with:

> eth.sendTransaction({from:eth.coinbase, to:eth.accounts[1], value: web3.toWei(0.05, "ether")})
Please unlock account d1ade25ccd3d550a7eb532ac759cac7be09c2719.
Passphrase: 
Account is now unlocked for this session.
'0xeeb66b211e7d9be55232ed70c2ebb1bcc5d5fd9ed01d876fac5cff45b5bf8bf4'

The resulting transaction is 0xeeb66b211e7d9be55232ed70c2ebb1bcc5d5fd9ed01d876fac5cff45b5bf8bf4

If the password was incorrect you will instead receive an error:

error: could not unlock sender account

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CLI interface

The Javascript commands from above can be executed without entering the interactive Javascript console by using the --exec command line option:

$ geth --exec='eth.sendTransaction({from:sender, to:receiver, value: amount})' [console|attach]