Most of you already know the Ark Desktop Application.

It is an easy to use application to manage your wallets. For some use cases it makes sense to use the command line client to interact with the Ark blockchain instead. This article will provide a short introduction to get you going with the “Ark Command Line Client (ark-client)” on a windows machine.

Install Preconditions

In order to use the command line you will need npm (node pagacke manager). It is used to install and run the command line client. Luckily npm is included in the node.js installer which has an easy to use Windows Installer (msi). You can download and use the node.js installer from this website:

Download Link

You can follow the installation wizard to install node.js and npm. Once that is done we can do everything else in the command line.

Open Powershell

Powershell (PS) is a command line tool of windows which we will use for this guide to work with the “Ark Command Line Client”. Just click start and type “Powershell”. It should come up as top search result.

Open PowerShell

The powershell will look like that:

Powershell

Now we are ready to install the “Ark Command Line Client”.

Install Ark Command Line Client

The installation is explained on the github page:

All you need to do is to copy/paste that line into the Powershell:

npm install -g arkecosystem/ark-client#master

Update ark-client

I already had it installed. Thus my output is a bit shorter than a new install. You will see a bit more text. But now you are ready to launch the tool. I will now switch to call the “Ark Command Line Client” by it’s technical name (ark-client) to make it a bit shorter.

Start the ark-client

We installed it globally. This means you can just type the following line in the powershell in any directory and it will start the ark-client.

ark-client

Start

Now the ark-client is started and you can interact with it by entering commands.

Using the ark-client

The first thing you will want to do is check all available commands.

help

Command: help

Let’s have a look at all the available commands:

help

exit

connect <network>

connect node <url>

disconnect

network stats

account status <address>

account vote <name>

account send <amount> <recipient>

account delegate <username>

account create

account vanity <string>

message sign <message>

message verify <message> <publickey>

shARK

If you want to use one of these commands you will have to type it and replace the complete part in the brackets (including the brackets). The first thing you have to do is to connect to a network. Let’s use devnet for now in order to test and learn. Devnet is a clone of Ark mainnet for testing purposes. It is ideal as you don’t have to worry about loosing any Ark.

connect devnet

Connect to devnet

Now we can create an account:

account create

Account creation

Make sure you write down your passphrase and address. Once you get some Dark on your wallet you will have to enter your passphrase to create transactions. We call the token on the devnet “Dark” to distinguish it from the “Ark” on the mainnet. Devnet addresses start with a “D” and mainnet addresses with an “A”. You can get devnet tokens for free if you ask in the slack channel #devnet by providing your devnet address.

I am sure you can find out the rest from here.

If you connect to mainnet you will be interacting with the real Ark blockchain and your precious Ark. So be careful what you do!

Conclusion

I hope that gave a short introduction into an alternative client to use Ark. You will want to use the Ark Desktop most of the time but it is good to know that there is an other option.

Delegate jarunik