# Get Started

The XRP Ledger is always online and entirely public. You can access it **directly from a web browser** with a few steps described in this page. Scroll down to get started!

## 1. Prerequisites

To access the XRP Ledger from a webpage, load [Lodash](https://lodash.com/) and [RippleAPI for JavaScript (ripple-lib)](rippleapi-reference.html) in your site's HTML. For example:

```html
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.15/lodash.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/ripple-lib@1.8.0/build/ripple-latest-min.js"></script>
```

<!-- SPELLING_IGNORE: lodash -->

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.15/lodash.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/ripple-lib@1.8.0/build/ripple-latest-min.js"></script>

On this page, that's already done, so continue to the next step!


## 2. First Script

The following code gets the latest [ledger version](ledgers.html) and a list of transactions that were newly-validated in that ledger version, using the [`getLedger()` method](rippleapi-reference.html#getledger). Try running it as-is, or change the code and see what happens.

**Tip:** If you can, open your browser's Developer Tools by pressing **F12**. The "Console" tab provides a native JavaScript console and can give insight into what code is running on any webpage.


<!-- JS_EDITOR_START step2 -->

```js
const mainnet = new ripple.RippleAPI({
  server: 'wss://s1.ripple.com'
});

(async function(api) {
  await api.connect();

  let response = await api.getLedger({
    includeTransactions: true
  });
  console.log(response);

})(mainnet);
```

```js
const mainnet = new ripple.RippleAPI({
  server: 'wss://s.altnet.rippletest.net/'
});

(async function(api) {
  await api.connect();

  let response = await api.getLedger({
      includeTransactions: true
    });
  console.log(response);

})(mainnet);
```

```js
const mainnet = new ripple.RippleAPI({
  server: 'wss://s1.ripple.com'
});

(async function(api) {
  await api.connect();

  let response = await api.getLedger({
      includeTransactions: true
    });
  let tx_id = response.transactionHashes[0];
  let response2 = await api.getTransaction(tx_id);
  console.log(response2);

})(mainnet);
```

```js
const mainnet = new ripple.RippleAPI({
  server: 'wss://s1.ripple.com'
});

(async function(api) {
  await api.connect();

  let response = await api.getLedger({
      includeTransactions: true
    });
  console.log('Total XRP: '+api.dropsToXrp(response.totalDrops));

})(mainnet);
```

<!-- JS_EDITOR_END -->



## 3. Next Steps

Try editing the code from step 2 to do something different:

- Connect to the [Testnet](parallel-networks.html) public server at `wss://s.altnet.rippletest.net/` instead. [Answer >](javascript:js_interactives.step2.ex_1())
- Look up the details of a transaction using the [`getTransaction()` method](rippleapi-reference.html#gettransaction). For the `id`, use one of the `transactionHashes` from the `getLedger()` response! [Answer >](javascript:js_interactives.step2.ex_2())
- Convert the `totalDrops` from the response to decimal XRP. [Answer >](javascript:js_interactives.step2.ex_3())


## Further Reading

<!--{# Followed by bullet points automatically generated by the landing template #}-->