<p>Blockchain.info definitely has a client installed on their servers, that's where they get all the block data from. I heard they're using a fork of BitcoinJ.</p>

<p>In the Bitcoin-qt daemon, you can get the difficulty of the latest block with the getdifficulty command, and you can get complete information about every block, including the difficulty, with getblock.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-07T07:08:40.990Z
How would I do it without a UI, say, if I installed bitcoind on my server?
Kinnard Hockenhull
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-07T07:54:27.080Z
If you can access it with a CLI, you can go to the daemon directory and run bitcoind.exe with the required command as a parameter. Other than that there's something called JSON-RPC but I don't really know what that is.
Meni Rosenfeld
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-14T02:44:52.027Z
Drats, I have a Mac . . .
Kinnard Hockenhull
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-14T04:37:50.967Z
@KinnardHockenhull: Are you talking about a computer you have locally? I don't know how Macs work, but doesn't it have a command prompt?
Meni Rosenfeld
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-03T23:22:18.530Z
@KinnardHockenhull Open up spotlight and type in "terminal" for the command line.  If your bitcoind instance has JSON-RPC enabled through config you can use CURL to access the data
makerofthings7
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-03T23:23:56.080Z
Or just open the regular QT client and click help : Debug Window : Console.  You can use most of the commands right there if youre running 7.x
makerofthings7
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-07T06:45:09.693Z
2012-12-07T06:45:09.693Z
Meni Rosenfeld
<p>Do they have a client installed on their servers that pulls the info out of block headers? How does it do it? What's the command?</p>

<client><difficulty><blockchain.info><live-data>
How does blockchaininfo find out the difficulty?
Kinnard Hockenhull
# How does blockchaininfo find out the difficulty?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2012-12-07)

Do they have a client installed on their servers that pulls the info out of block headers? How does it do it? What's the command?

**Tags:** client, difficulty, blockchain.info, live-data


---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2012-12-07. Score: 2

Blockchain.info definitely has a client installed on their servers, that's where they get all the block data from. I heard they're using a fork of BitcoinJ.

In the Bitcoin-qt daemon, you can get the difficulty of the latest block with the getdifficulty command, and you can get complete information about every block, including the difficulty, with getblock.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: How would I do it without a UI, say, if I installed bitcoind on my server?  
> **username_1**: If you can access it with a CLI, you can go to the daemon directory and run bitcoind.exe with the required command as a parameter. Other than that there's something called JSON-RPC but I don't really know what that is.  
> **username_0**: Drats, I have a Mac . . .  
> **username_1**: @KinnardHockenhull: Are you talking about a computer you have locally? I don't know how Macs work, but doesn't it have a command prompt?  
> **username_2**: @KinnardHockenhull Open up spotlight and type in "terminal" for the command line.  If your bitcoind instance has JSON-RPC enabled through config you can use CURL to access the data  
> **username_2**: Or just open the regular QT client and click help : Debug Window : Console.  You can use most of the commands right there if youre running 7.x  

---

