getTransactionReceipt

getTransactionReceipt is a function in Ethereum-compatible JSON-RPC interfaces that retrieves the receipt of a specific transaction by its hash. A transaction receipt is produced only after the transaction has been mined and included in a block, and it contains the outcome and metadata of the execution. If the transaction has not yet been mined, the method returns null.

The receipt object includes details such as the transactionHash, transactionIndex, blockHash, blockNumber, from, to, and gas-related fields. It also provides cumulativeGasUsed and gasUsed, which indicate the total gas used in the block up to and including this transaction and the gas consumed by this particular transaction, respectively. For contract creation transactions, contractAddress is populated with the address of the newly created contract; otherwise it is null. The logsBloom field and the logs array contain the emitted event logs, with each log containing address, topics, data, and other metadata. A status field indicates whether the transaction succeeded (typically 0x1) or failed (0x0) in post-Byzantium networks; older receipts may expose a root field instead of status.

Usage in JSON-RPC and libraries: the JSON-RPC method is eth_getTransactionReceipt and takes a single parameter—the transaction hash. In common libraries, such as web3.js and ethers.js, there are convenience calls like web3.eth.getTransactionReceipt(txHash) or provider.getTransactionReceipt(txHash). The function returns the receipt object or null if the transaction has not yet been mined.

Applications and considerations: getTransactionReceipt is used to verify execution results, inspect emitted events via logs, and determine gas usage. Access to historical receipts may require querying archival nodes or stored data, depending on the network and node configuration.