Bitcoind functionality w/o running a full node I'd like to do some of the example in "Mastering Bitcoin, Programming the Open Blockchain" using bitoind on my Ubuntu system. Is there a program (possibly bitcoind itself) that allows me to do this w/o setting up a full not which I can currently not do for Hardware reasons?

I would mainly like to be able to explore transaction with comments such as bitcoin-cli decoderawtransaction for instance.

Many thanks and sorry if this is a stupid question.
I guess you could use some API that provides the same functionality.

See https://chainquery.com/bitcoin-api/decoderawtransaction


  bitcoin-cli decoderawtransaction


And much more calls/commands are listed there.

Does this fit your needs?