Get Epoch Information for finished epochs

Question

My goal is to implement a function which gets epoch information of finished epochs from a node. The input should be the epoch nr and the output should contain:

• First block
• First block timestamp
• Last block
• Last block timestamp

Similar to what i get when looking at the Epoch info on Solana-Explorer: https://explorer.solana.com/epoch/417

I only found GetEpochInfo() so far, but here i only get information about the current epoch. Is there a way to get this information by calling Rpc Methods on a node?

Answer 1

Just from RPC methods, you can:

• fetch the epoch schedule using getEpochSchedule https://solana.com/docs/rpc/http/getepochschedule
• calculate the slots for your epoch or use the EpochSchedule class in JS https://github.com/solana-labs/solana-web3.js/blob/master/packages/library-legacy/src/epoch-schedule.ts
• fetch the block for the first and last slot using getBlock https://solana.com/docs/rpc/http/getblock
• extract the timestamp from the block at the "blockTime" field

The explorer is open-source, so feel free to see how it's being done there! Here's the epoch details page https://github.com/solana-labs/explorer/blob/master/src/pages/EpochDetailsPage.tsx