Ethers is a comprehensive Web3 library for interacting with smart contracts on the Ethereum (Or any EVM based blockchain) using Elixir.
Inspired by ethers.js and web3.js, Ethers leverages Elixir's amazing meta-programming capabilities to generate Elixir modules for give smart contracts from their ABI. It also generates beautiful documentation for those modules which can further help developers.
You can install the package by adding ethers
(and optionally ex_secp256k1
) to the list of
dependencies in your mix.exs
file:
def deps do
[
{:ethers, "~> 0.5.2"},
# Uncomment next line if you want to use local signers
# {:ex_secp256k1, "~> 0.7.2"}
]
end
The complete documentation is available on hexdocs.
To use Elixir Ethers, ensure you have a configured JSON-RPC endpoint. Configure the endpoint using the following configuration parameter.
# config.exs
config :ethers,
rpc_client: Ethereumex.HttpClient, # Defaults to: Ethereumex.HttpClient
keccak_module: ExKeccak, # Defaults to: ExKeccak
json_module: Jason, # Defaults to: Jason
secp256k1_module: ExSecp256k1, # Defaults to: ExSecp256k1
default_signer: nil, # Defaults to: nil, see Ethers.Signer for more info
default_signer_opts: [] # Defaults to: []
# If using Ethereumex, you can specify a default JSON-RPC server url here for all requests.
config :ethereumex, url: "[URL_HERE]"
You can use one of the RPC URLs for your chain/wallet of choice or try out one of them from chainlist.org.
For more configuration options, refer to ethereumex.
To send transactions, you need a wallet client capable of signing transactions and exposing a JSON-RPC endpoint.
To use Elixir Ethers, you must have your contract's ABI in json format, which can be obtained from
etherscan.io. This library also contains standard contract interfaces such
as ERC20
, ERC721
and some more by default (refer to built-in contracts in
hexdocs).
Create a module for your contract as follows:
defmodule MyERC20Token do
use Ethers.Contract,
abi_file: "path/to/abi.json",
default_address: "[Contract address here (optional)]"
# You can also add more code here in this module if you wish
end
After defining the module, all the functions can be called like any other Elixir module.
To fetch the results (return value(s)) of a function you can pass your function result to the
Ethers.call/2
function.
# Calling functions on the blockchain
iex> MyERC20Token.balance_of("0x[Address]") |> Ethers.call()
{:ok, 654294510138460920346}
Refer to Ethers.call/2 for more information.
To send transaction (eth_sendTransaction) to the blockchain, you can use the
Ethers.send/2
function.
Ensure that you specify a from
option to inform your client which account to use as the signer:
iex> MyERC20Token.transfer("0x[Recipient]", 1000) |> Ethers.send(from: "0x[Sender]")
{:ok, "0xf313ff7ff54c6db80ad44c3ad58f72ff0fea7ce88e5e9304991ebd35a6e76000"}
Refer to Ethers.send/2 for more information.
Ethers provides functionality for creating event filters and fetching related events from the
blockchain. Each contract generated by Ethers also will have EventFilters
module
(e.g. MyERC20Token.EventFilter
s) that can be used to create filters for events.
To create an event filter and then use
Ethers.get_logs/2
function like the below
example.
# Create The Event Filter
# (`nil` can be used for a parameter in EventFilters functions to indicate no filtering)
iex> filter = MyERC20Token.EventFilters.transfer("0x[From Address Here]", nil)
# Then you can simply list the logs using `Ethers.get_logs/2`
iex> Ethers.get_logs(filter)
{:ok,
[
%Ethers.Event{
address: "0x5883c66ca442461d406f330775d42954bfcf7d92",
block_hash: "0x83de67fd285067b838790406ea68f21a3afbc0ade534047725b5ccfb904c9ed3",
block_number: 17077047,
topics: ["Transfer(address,address,uint256)",
"0x6b75d8af000000e20b7a7ddf000ba900b4009a80",
"0x230507f6a391ae5ac0ec124f1c5b8ce454fe3f3d"],
topics_raw: ["0xddf252ad1be2c89b69c2b068fc378daa952ba7f163c4a11628f55a4df523b3ef",
"0x0000000000000000000000006b75d8af000000e20b7a7ddf000ba900b4009a80",
"0x000000000000000000000000230507f6a391ae5ac0ec124f1c5b8ce454fe3f3d"],
transaction_hash: "0xaa6fb2e1bbb27f667e76b03e8cde23db694207e06b9aa810d4c20c1f109a58e5",
transaction_index: 0,
data: [761112156078097834180608],
log_index: 0,
removed: false
},
%Ethers.Event{...},
...
]}
To resolve ENS or any other name service provider (which are ENS compatible) in the blockchain
you can simply use Ethers.NameService
module.
iex> Ethers.NameService.resolve("vitalik.eth")
{:ok, "0xd8da6bf26964af9d7eed9e03e53415d37aa96045"}
Ethers already includes some of the well-known contract interface standards for you to use. Here is a list of them.
- ERC20 - The well know fungible token standard
- ERC165 - Standard Interface detection
- ERC721 - Non-Fungible tokens (NFTs) standard
- ERC777 - Improved fungible token standard
- ERC1155 - Multi-Token standard (Fungible, Non-Fungible or Semi-Fungible)
- Multicall - Multicall3
To use them you just need to specify the target contract address (:to
option) of your token and
call the functions. Example:
iex> tx_data = Ethers.Contracts.ERC20.balance_of("0x[Holder Address]")
#Ethers.TxData<
function balanceOf(
address _owner "0x[Holder Address]"
) view returns (
uint256 balance
)
>
iex> Ethers.call(tx_data, to: "0x[Token Address]")
{:ok, 123456}
For a detailed documentation visit Ethers hexdocs page.
Ethers generates documentation for all the functions and event filters based on the ABI data.
To get the documentation you can either use the h/1
IEx helper function or generate HTML/epub
docs using ExDoc.
iex(3)> h MyERC20Token.balance_of
def balance_of(owner)
@spec balance_of(Ethers.Types.t_address()) :: Ethers.TxData.t()
Prepares balanceOf(address _owner) call parameters on the contract.
This function should only be called for result and never in a transaction on
its own. (Use Ethers.call/2)
State mutability: view
## Function Parameter Types
• _owner: `:address`
## Return Types (when called with `Ethers.call/2`)
• balance: {:uint, 256}
One cool and potentially useful feature of Ethers is how you can inspect the call
iex(4)> h MyERC20Token.EventFilters.transfer
def transfer(from, to)
@spec transfer(Ethers.Types.t_address(), Ethers.Types.t_address()) ::
Ethers.EventFilter.t()
Create event filter for Transfer(address from, address to, uint256 value)
For each indexed parameter you can either pass in the value you want to filter
or nil if you don't want to filter.
## Parameter Types (Event indexed topics)
• from: :address
• to: :address
## Event `data` Types (when called with `Ethers.get_logs/2`)
These are non-indexed topics (often referred to as data) of the event log.
• value: {:uint, 256}
By default, Ethers will rely on the default blockchain endpoint to handle the signing (using eth_sendTransaction
RPC function). Obviously public endpoints cannot help you with signing the transactions since they do not hold your private keys.
To sign transactions on Ethers, You can specify a signer
module when sending/signing transactions. A signer module is a module which implements the Ethers.Signer behaviour.
Ethers has these built-in signers to use:
Ethers.Signer.Local
: A local signer which loads a private key fromsigner_opts
and signs the transactions.Ethers.Signer.JsonRPC
: Useseth_signTransaction
Json RPC function to sign transactions. (Using services like Consensys/web3signer or geth)
For more information on signers, visit hexdocs.
MyERC20Token.transfer("0x[Recipient]", 1000)
|> Ethers.send(
from: "0x[Sender]",
signer: Ethers.Signer.Local,
signer_opts: [private_key: "0x..."]
)
ex_keccak
is a Rustler NIF that brings keccak256 hashing to elixir.
It is the default used library in ex_abi
and ethers
. If for some reason you need to use a
different library (e.g. target does not support rustler) you can use the Application config value
and on top of that set the environment variable SKIP_EX_KECCAK=true
so ex_keccak is marked as
optional in hex dependencies.
# config.exs
config :ethers, keccak_module: MyKeccakModule
# Also make sure to set SKIP_EX_KECCAK=true when fetching dependencies and building them
All contributions are very welcome (as simple as fixing typos). Please feel free to open issues and push Pull Requests. Just remember to be respectful to everyone!
To run the tests locally, follow below steps:
brew install ethereum
npm install -g solc
- Run anvil (from foundry). After installing anvil, just run the following in a new window
> anvil
Then you should be able to run tests through mix test
.
Ethers was possible to make thanks to the great contributors of the following libraries.
And also all the people who contributed to this project in any ways.