eth_getblockbynumber should return null for pending blocks

[gagarin55]

Hi there,

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System information

Geth version: Geth/v1.8.22-omnibus-260f7fbd/linux-amd64/go1.11.1

Expected behaviour

According to documentation I expect that eth_getBlockByNumber returns number == null for pending
block

Actual behaviour

eth_getBlockByNumber('pending') returns not null in block.number field

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_getBlockByNumber","params":["pending", true],"id":1}' https://mainnet.infura.io/

[holiman]

My thoughts:

• Setting the block number to null does not make sense, since we do know the number of the pending block. How does parity do? cc @sorpaas
• Setting hash, miner, mixhash to null does make sense (geth already does)
• Currently, in the transactions returned within the pending block, the blockHash is not null:ed in geth. Which is quirky, and does not make sense to me.

[fjl]

Fixing this is trivial, just add "number" here:

go-ethereum/internal/ethapi/api.go

Line 628 in 2ca89ea

for _, field := range []string{"hash", "nonce", "miner"} {

[princesinha19]

@holiman I think we should return null for the pending block. Parity also returns null for the pending block. See this issue (openethereum/parity-ethereum#8703).