Capability to unlock an account? about ethereum HOT 2 CLOSED

Just looking at the JSON RPC page the only mention of unlock is for the eth_sign method, which says the account should be unlocked, so it looks as though there's no JSON API for this, however I could have missed something here, how does the web3.js package do this? If it can be done over JSON RPC I'll update the package to include it.

I'm just updating the package for Dart 2 usage, when this is complete I'll have a deeper look at this.

from ethereum.

Thanks for checking into this. Yeah, good question. Searching through 0.x.x and 1.x.x web3.js code for 'unlockAccount', I don't see where it's actually turned into a JSON API call. I just see a few lines that I think are a template for Typescript's static type checking in https://github.com/ethereum/web3.js/tree/1.0ES6/packages/web3-eth-personal/src with a Readme a level up. Searching finds answers at https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/8478/account-is-locked-how-to-unlock-it-using-json-rpc and https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/4157/how-to-unlock-the-account-with-geth (with the first link showing the direct JSON call/syntax). Seeing it missing on the JSON RPC page, I guess this means it's not required? So if web3.js implemented it, they were just being helpful? Or is that some optional defined extension? I think I read that 'geth' has a web3 package inside it. So how did they know if they should, and how to, implement handling unlockAccount? Are the geth/web3 people all buddies, or the same people? Thanks again.

Updated 8/16/2018:

Also, I had planned on using web3.js' 'ecrecover' function to retrieve the account from the signed data and a signature. Documentation at https://web3js.readthedocs.io/en/1.0/web3-eth-personal.html. Looks like this is in the same package as 'unlockAccount' and also not in the JSON RPC spec, so I guess these are a collection of helper utilities/functions for working with the blockchain. Not sure what the raw json should look like though. I'll look into the web3.js implementation to see if I can piece it together.

Updated 8/20/2018:

OK, it's a little clearer now. There is another set of management APIs available in 'geth': https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Management-APIs. In there are the 'personal' ones I was mentioning (unlockAccount, ecrecover). Looks like the web3.js package I originally used implemented/wrapped calls to these geth APIs, and I guess I thought all APIs were part of any 'web3' implementation, but maybe anything beyond the core transaction related ones are considered optional.

from ethereum.