Ethers.js: Support getBlock parameter for returning full transaction objects

[kuchta]

Without this feature I couldn't use this library for retrieving all block transactions since calling getTransation for all transactions in a block is inefficient.

[ricmoo]

This is something we have been considering adding. The issue is that only certain backends support it. We have two options:

1) Backends that do not support full blocks, return an error.
2) Backends that do not support full blocks, calls fetchTransaction for each transaction hash.

I'm leaning towards 1, since 2 would likely result in a soft-ban from Etherscan when using the EtherscanProvider.

You can, for now, accomplish this by using the JsonRpcProvider.send directly (however, the block is not parsed):

var provider = new ethers.providers.JsonRpcProvider();
provider.send('eth_getBlockByHash', [ blockHash, true ]).then((block) => {
    console.log(block);
});

I'll add this for the v4 release, because it is certainly very useful when processing blocks.

[ricmoo]

This is available in 4.0.0.-beta.14. Please let me know if you have any issues with it.

Thanks! :)