title: is there a way to read .dat files as in the storage format for bitcoin blocks?
body: <p>I've generated some "raw data" that is encoded as <code>.dat</code>from my bitcoin testnet, accordingly I have the file <a href="https://github.com/s-matthew-english/docker_test/blob/master/blk00000.dat" rel="nofollow noreferrer">/blk00000.dat</a>, is this the data of my blocks I've generated? i.e. the transaction data etc.?</p>
  
  <p>It looks like this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
  0000 0000 0000 0000 00ff ffff ff03 5301
  01ff ffff ff01 00f2 052a 0100 0000 2321
  02f6 89e4 8543 5d1a 78f9 d08c a612 7e36
  2216 20e1 ad70 7576 dbae 41e7 c01d 406a
  b7ac 0000 0000 fabf b5da b300 0000 0000
  0020 abb4 1583 7333 ff2b fcde f019 f2ad
  4f4d 5c69 462f 277e 1c52 8564 53c2 ab2d
  7674 1c8d de8d e0fa 11eb 9dfe 798d 4839
  5a61 b9d3 439c f4e7 79a5 ebe3 dabe f15d
  2930 d791 7357 ffff 7f20 0100 0000 0101
  0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
  0000 0000 ffff ffff 0354 0101 ffff ffff
  0100 f205 2a01 0000 0023 2102 f689 e485
  435d 1a78 f9d0 8ca6 127e 3622 1620 e1ad
  7075 76db ae41 e7c0 1d40 6ab7 ac00 0000
  00fa bfb5 dab3 0000 0000 0000 2026 a3de
  12ea 2f3a deb5 10bf d337 4390 7371 c2d6
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>is there a way to render it as human readable JSON, so I can see it as something like this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>{
      "version" : 90300,
      "protocolversion" : 70002,
      "walletversion" : 60000,
      "balance" : 0.00000000,
      "blocks" : 0,
      "timeoffset" : 0,
      "connections" : 1,
      "proxy" : "",
      "difficulty" : 0.00000000,
      "testnet" : false,
      "keypoololdest" : 1413617762,
      "keypoolsize" : 101,
      "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
      "relayfee" : 0.00001000,
      "errors" : ""
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>
  
  <p>I have 2 <code>bitcoin.conf</code> files, as I have two nodes, they look like this: </p>
  
  <pre><code># testnet-box functionality
  regtest=1
  dnsseed=0
  upnp=0
  
  # listen on different ports than default testnet
  port=19000
  rpcport=19001
  
  # always run a server, even with bitcoin-qt
  server=1
  
  # enable SSL for RPC server
  #rpcssl=1
  
  rpcallowip=0.0.0.0/0
  
  rpcuser=admin1
  rpcpassword=123
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It should be noted that I'm using the configuration that I got from <a href="https://github.com/freewil/bitcoin-testnet-box" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a></p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT II</strong></p>
  
  <p>I had a problem with the last step, namely XXX</p>
  
  <p>it resulted in the following error: </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/y4NkB.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/y4NkB.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>if I had to guess I would say I went wrong on this part </p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;path-to-datadirectory&gt;</code> where exactlly should that be? where <code>blk00000.dat</code> lives? the whole directory? or exactly that file? </p>