How to unlockAccount account using private key instead of password

Question

I am working with https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JSON-RPC api + curl .

And implementing custom api using this php library: https://github.com/Achse/geth-jsonrpc-php-client

below method is working fine for me for unlock before transaction:

$ curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"personal_unlockAccount","params":["0x7642b...", "password", 3600],"id":67}' http://localhost:8545

But I want to unlock account using private key not by password. So is there any way to unlock account and do transaction using private key.

Answer 1

you can generate a raw transaction as described here or use myetherwallet to get the signed raw transaction and then call

curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_sendRawTransaction","params":[{raw_transaction}],"id":1}'

// Result
{
  "id":1,
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "result": "0xe670ec64341771606e55d6b4ca35a1a6b75ee3d5145a99d05921026d1527331"
}

as explained here

besides as @yogesh has mentioned in his comment bellow Ethereumjs build for browser can be used to build the rawtransaction (in client side).

Answer 2

You don't need to unlock your account if you know your private key. The reason is that transactions are signed using your private key, and unlocking your account is needed to obtain your private key from your keyfile. So if you already know your private key, there is no need to unlock your account.

You can use myetherwallet.com or ethychat.io for making transactions using your private key.

If you want to make transactions using JSON-RPC and your private key, you would probably have to create a signed transaction and send this using eth_sendRawTransaction.