01What
Reports the status of the XRPL server you are connected to: software version, uptime, the latest validated ledger, current reserve settings, and load.
02Why you'd use it
It answers 'is the network healthy, and what are the rules right now?' — including the live base and owner reserve values that everything else in this platform references.
03How
- 1Run it (no inputs needed).
- 2Find validated_ledger in the response: reserve_base_xrp is the account minimum and reserve_inc_xrp is the per-object owner reserve.
- 3Check the ledger's age and sequence to confirm the network is progressing normally (a new ledger closes every 3-5 seconds).
Watch out
- Reserve values can change over time through validator voting — read them here instead of hard-coding them.
- This describes one server's view; on a healthy network that matches everyone, but a lagging server shows stale data.
- Watch load_factor — above 1 means the network is busy and transaction fees are escalating.
For example
Your app displays 'spendable balance' to users. On startup it reads reserve_base_xrp (1) and reserve_inc_xrp (0.2) from server_info and computes spendable = balance - base - (ownerCount x increment) — correct even if reserves change next year.