ethier

Motivation

ethier (pronounced "easier" with a lisp) intends to:

1. Gradually replace the reliance on JavaScript in Ethereum development with Go as it is (a) faster due to in-process backends for testing, and (b) more robust due to type safety. Although unlikely, ethier's "North Star" is a replacement for Truffle/Hardhat.
2. Provide reusable Solidity functionality not covered by OpenZeppelin and, where appropriate, provide respective Go bindings with round-trip testing.

Versioning, stability, and production readiness

ethier uses Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. As the major version is currently zero, the API is open to change without warning.

Contracts are very thoroughly tested but have not been subject to audit nor widespread use. Early adopters are not only welcome, but will be greatly appreciated.

Why NPM if we're moving away from JavaScript?

Although ethier intends to use Go as much as possible, users may not, and NPM is the de facto standard in Ethereum development. While this gives us a weird mashup of go.mod and package.json, it's fit for purpose.

Getting started

Installation

1. Assuming solc and go are already installed:

go install github.com/divergencetech/ethier/ethier@latest
go install github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/cmd/abigen@latest

1. Ensure that the go/bin directory is in your $PATH. This can be confirmed by running which ethier && echo GOOD; if the word GOOD is printed then the ethier binary has been found.

Usage

Generating Go bindings

This example assumes that the file is in the contracts directory with all Solidity files present. If moving to a different directory, simply change the relative paths.

package contracts

//go:generate ethier gen MyContract.sol

Run go generate ./... to generate Go bindings, including deployment functions. The above example will generate contracts/generated.go with bindings to MyContract.sol. These bindings can be used for (1) testing and/or (2) connecting to a gateway node (e.g. Infura or Alchemy), depending on the ContractBackend being used:

1. For tests, use ethier's ethtest.SimulatedBackend, which extends the standard geth simulator with convenience behaviour like auto commitment of transactions.

2. For a gateway, use the ethclient package.

Example test

package contracts

import (
   "testing" 

   "github.com/divergencetech/ethier/ethtest"
)

// The test backend creates as many accounts as needed, each representing a different
// "actor" in the test scenarios. A useful pattern is to simply enumerate them the iota
// pattern (which automatically increments) and add a `numAccounts` at the end.
const (
   deployer = iota
   vandal
   numAccounts
)

func TestMyContract(t *testing.T){
   sim := ethtest.NewSimulatedBackend(t, numAccounts)

   // The DeployMyContract function is automatically generated when running `go generate`.
   // addr and tx generally aren't useful, but are documented here for completeness
   addr, tx, contract, err := DeployMyContract(sim.Acc(deployer), sim /*,,, [constructor arguments]*/)
   if err != nil {
      t.Fatalf("DeployMyContract(%v) error %v", …, err)
   }

   // NOTE: If connecting to a deployed contract above, use NewMyContract() and substitute `sim`
   // for an *ethclient.Client`.

   t.Run("protect something sensitive", func(t *testing.T){
      // The test-actor pattern in the consts above makes tests self-documenting.
      _, err := contract.DoSomethingImportant(sim.Acc(vandal))
      // Confirm that there's an error because the vandal shouldn't be allowed to do anything
      // important!!! See the ethtest/revert package.
   })
}

See tests/ for further usage examples. Remember to add generated.go to your .gitignore file.