These are for quick reference. For hands on practice, checkout cryptozombies tutorial
For Solidity official Documentation
As the file is large, use readme index/navigation bar to navigate through the page.
Solidity's code is encapsulated in contracts. A contract is the fundamental building block of Ethereum applications — all variables and functions belong to a contract, and this will be the starting point of all your projects.
An empty contract named HelloWorld would look like this:
contract HelloWorld {
}All solidity source code should start with a "version pragma" — a declaration of the version of the Solidity compiler this code should use. This is to prevent issues with future compiler versions potentially introducing changes that would break your code.
For the scope of this tutorial, we'll want to be able to compile our smart contracts with any compiler version in the range of 0.5.0 (inclusive) to 0.6.0 (exclusive). It looks like this: pragma solidity >=0.5.0 <0.6.0;.
Putting it together, here is a bare-bones starting contract — the first thing you'll write every time you start a new project:
pragma solidity >=0.5.0 <0.6.0;
contract HelloWorld {
}
State variables are permanently stored in contract storage. This means they're written to the Ethereum blockchain. Think of them like writing to a DB.
contract Example {
// This will be stored permanently in the blockchain
uint myUnsignedInteger = 100;
}
In this example contract, we created a uint called myUnsignedInteger and set it equal to 100.
The uint data type is an unsigned integer, meaning its value must be non-negative. There's also an int data type for signed integers.
Note: In Solidity,
uintis actually an alias foruint256, a 256-bit unsigned integer. You can declare uints with less bits —uint8,uint16,uint32, etc.. But in general you want to simply use uint except in specific cases, which we'll talk about in later lessons.
Math in Solidity is pretty straightforward. The following operations are the same as in most programming languages:
- Addition: x + y
- Subtraction: x - y,
- Multiplication: x * y
- Division: x / y
- Modulus / remainder: x % y (for example, 13 % 5 is 3, because if you divide 5 into 13, 3 is the remainder)
Solidity also supports an exponential operator (i.e. "x to the power of y", x^y):
uint x = 5 ** 2; // equal to 5^2 = 25struct Person {
uint age;
string name;
}Structs allow you to create more complicated data types that have multiple properties.
Note that we just introduced a new type, string. Strings are used for arbitrary-length UTF-8 data. Ex. string greeting = "Hello world!"
When you want a collection of something, you can use an array. There are two types of arrays in Solidity: fixed arrays and dynamic arrays:
// Array with a fixed length of 2 elements:
uint[2] fixedArray;
// another fixed Array, can contain 5 strings:
string[5] stringArray;
// a dynamic Array - has no fixed size, can keep growing:
uint[] dynamicArray;You can also create an array of structs. Using the previous chapter's Person struct:
Person[] people; // dynamic Array, we can keep adding to itRemember that state variables are stored permanently in the blockchain? So creating a dynamic array of structs like this can be useful for storing structured data in your contract, kind of like a database.
You can declare an array as public, and Solidity will automatically create a getter method for it. The syntax looks like:
Person[] public people;Other contracts would then be able to read from, but not write to, this array. So this is a useful pattern for storing public data in your contract.
A function declaration in solidity looks like the following:
function eatHamburgers(string memory _name, uint _amount) public {
}This is a function named eatHamburgers that takes 2 parameters: a string and a uint. For now the body of the function is empty. Note that we're specifying the function visibility as public. We're also providing instructions about where the _name variable should be stored- in memory. This is required for all reference types such as arrays, structs, mappings, and strings.
What is a reference type you ask?
Well, there are two ways in which you can pass an argument to a Solidity function:
-
By value, which means that the Solidity compiler creates a new copy of the parameter's value and passes it to your function. This allows your function to modify the value without worrying that the value of the initial parameter gets changed.
-
By reference, which means that your function is called with a... reference to the original variable. Thus, if your function changes the value of the variable it receives, the value of the original variable gets changed.
Note: It's convention (but not required) to start function parameter variable names with an underscore (_) in order to differentiate them from global variables. We'll use that convention throughout our tutorial.
You would call this function like so:
eatHamburgers("vitalik", 100);Remember our Person struct in the previous example?
struct Person {
uint age;
string name;
}
Person[] public people;Now we're going to learn how to create new Persons and add them to our people array.
// create a New Person:
Person satoshi = Person(172, "Satoshi");
// Add that person to the Array:
people.push(satoshi);We can also combine these together and do them in one line of code to keep things clean:
people.push(Person(16, "Vitalik"));Note that array.push() adds something to the end of the array, so the elements are in the order we added them. See the following example:
uint[] numbers;
numbers.push(5);
numbers.push(10);
numbers.push(15);
// numbers is now equal to [5, 10, 15]In Solidity, functions are public by default. This means anyone (or any other contract) can call your contract's function and execute its code.
Obviously this isn't always desirable, and can make your contract vulnerable to attacks. Thus it's good practice to mark your functions as private by default, and then only make public the functions you want to expose to the world.
Let's look at how to declare a private function:
uint[] numbers;
function _addToArray(uint _number) private {
numbers.push(_number);
}This means only other functions within our contract will be able to call this function and add to the numbers array.
As you can see, we use the keyword private after the function name. And as with function parameters, it's convention to start private function names with an underscore (_).
To return a value from a function, the declaration looks like this:
string greeting = "What's up dog";
function sayHello() public returns (string memory) {
return greeting;
}In Solidity, the function declaration contains the type of the return value (in this case string).
The above function doesn't actually change state in Solidity — e.g. it doesn't change any values or write anything.
So in this case we could declare it as a view function, meaning it's only viewing the data but not modifying it:
function sayHello() public view returns (string memory) { Solidity also contains pure functions, which means you're not even accessing any data in the app. Consider the following:
function _multiply(uint a, uint b) private pure returns (uint) {
return a * b;
}This function doesn't even read from the state of the app — its return value depends only on its function parameters. So in this case we would declare the function as pure.
Note: It may be hard to remember when to mark functions as pure/view. Luckily the Solidity compiler is good about issuing warnings to let you know when you should use one of these modifiers.
Ethereum has the hash function keccak256 built in, which is a version of SHA3. A hash function basically maps an input into a random 256-bit hexadecimal number. A slight change in the input will cause a large change in the hash.
It's useful for many purposes in Ethereum, but for right now we're just going to use it for pseudo-random number generation.
Also important, keccak256 expects a single parameter of type bytes. This means that we have to "pack" any parameters before calling keccak256:
Example:
//6e91ec6b618bb462a4a6ee5aa2cb0e9cf30f7a052bb467b0ba58b8748c00d2e5
keccak256(abi.encodePacked("aaaab"));
//b1f078126895a1424524de5321b339ab00408010b7cf0e6ed451514981e58aa9
keccak256(abi.encodePacked("aaaac"));As you can see, the returned values are totally different despite only a 1 character change in the input.
Note: Secure random-number generation in blockchain is a very difficult problem. Our method here is insecure, but since security isn't top priority for our Zombie DNA, it will be good enough for our purposes.
Sometimes you need to convert between data types. Take the following example:
uint8 a = 5;
uint b = 6;
// throws an error because a * b returns a uint, not uint8:
uint8 c = a * b;
// we have to typecast b as a uint8 to make it work:
uint8 c = a * uint8(b);In the above, a * b returns a uint, but we were trying to store it as a uint8, which could cause potential problems. By casting it as a uint8, it works and the compiler won't throw an error.
Events are a way for your contract to communicate that something happened on the blockchain to your app front-end, which can be 'listening' for certain events and take action when they happen.
Example:
// declare the event
event IntegersAdded(uint x, uint y, uint result);
function add(uint _x, uint _y) public returns (uint) {
uint result = _x + _y;
// fire an event to let the app know the function was called:
emit IntegersAdded(_x, _y, result);
return result;
}Your app front-end could then listen for the event. A javascript implementation would look something like:
YourContract.IntegersAdded(function(error, result) {
// do something with result
})The Ethereum blockchain is made up of accounts, which you can think of like bank accounts. An account has a balance of Ether (the currency used on the Ethereum blockchain), and you can send and receive Ether payments to other accounts, just like your bank account can wire transfer money to other bank accounts.
Each account has an address, which you can think of like a bank account number. It's a unique identifier that points to that account, and it looks like this:
0x6B2eBFe3FE5c5B84746105421de93Df383b222E8
Just like structs and arrays. Mappings are another way of storing organized data in Solidity. Defining a mapping looks like this:
// For a financial app, storing a uint that holds the user's account balance:
mapping (address => uint) public accountBalance;
// Or could be used to store / lookup usernames based on userId
mapping (uint => string) userIdToName;
A mapping is essentially a key-value store for storing and looking up data. In the first example, the key is an address and the value is a uint, and in the second example the key is a uint and the value a string.
In Solidity, there are certain global variables that are available to all functions. One of these is msg.sender, which refers to the address of the person (or smart contract) who called the current function.
Note: In Solidity, function execution always needs to start with an external caller. A contract will just sit on the blockchain doing nothing until someone calls one of its functions. So there will always be a msg.sender.
Here's an example of using msg.sender and updating a mapping:
mapping (address => uint) favoriteNumber;
function setMyNumber(uint _myNumber) public {
// Update our `favoriteNumber` mapping to store `_myNumber` under `msg.sender`
favoriteNumber[msg.sender] = _myNumber;
// ^ The syntax for storing data in a mapping is just like with arrays
}
function whatIsMyNumber() public view returns (uint) {
// Retrieve the value stored in the sender's address
// Will be `0` if the sender hasn't called `setMyNumber` yet
return favoriteNumber[msg.sender];
}In this trivial example, anyone could call setMyNumber and store a uint in our contract, which would be tied to their address. Then when they called whatIsMyNumber, they would be returned the uint that they stored.
Using msg.sender gives you the security of the Ethereum blockchain — the only way someone can modify someone else's data would be to steal the private key associated with their Ethereum address.
we use require. require makes it so that the function will throw an error and stop executing if some condition is not true:
function sayHiToVitalik(string memory _name) public returns (string memory) {
// Compares if _name equals "Vitalik". Throws an error and exits if not true.
// (Side note: Solidity doesn't have native string comparison, so we
// compare their keccak256 hashes to see if the strings are equal)
require(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(_name)) == keccak256(abi.encodePacked("Vitalik")));
// If it's true, proceed with the function:
return "Hi!";
}If you call this function with sayHiToVitalik("Vitalik"), it will return "Hi!". If you call it with any other input, it will throw an error and not execute.
Thus require is quite useful for verifying certain conditions that must be true before running a function.
Most of the time code is getting quite long. Rather than making one extremely long contract, sometimes it makes sense to split your code logic across multiple contracts to organize the code.
One feature of Solidity that makes this more manageable is contract inheritance:
contract Doge {
function catchphrase() public returns (string memory) {
return "So Wow CryptoDoge";
}
}
contract BabyDoge is Doge {
function anotherCatchphrase() public returns (string memory) {
return "Such Moon BabyDoge";
}
}BabyDoge inherits from Doge. That means if you compile and deploy BabyDoge, it will have access to both catchphrase() and anotherCatchphrase() (and any other public functions we may define on Doge).
This can be used for logical inheritance (such as with a subclass, a Cat is an Animal). But it can also be used simply for organizing your code by grouping similar logic together into different contracts.
When you have multiple files and you want to import one file into another, Solidity uses the import keyword:
import "./someothercontract.sol";
contract newContract is SomeOtherContract {
}So if we had a file named someothercontract.sol in the same directory as this contract (that's what the ./ means), it would get imported by the compiler.
In Solidity, there are two locations you can store variables — in storage and in memory.
Storage refers to variables stored permanently on the blockchain. Memory variables are temporary, and are erased between external function calls to your contract. Think of it like your computer's hard disk vs RAM.
Most of the time you don't need to use these keywords because Solidity handles them by default. State variables (variables declared outside of functions) are by default storage and written permanently to the blockchain, while variables declared inside functions are memory and will disappear when the function call ends.
However, there are times when you do need to use these keywords, namely when dealing with structs and arrays within functions:
contract SandwichFactory {
struct Sandwich {
string name;
string status;
}
Sandwich[] sandwiches;
function eatSandwich(uint _index) public {
// Sandwich mySandwich = sandwiches[_index];
// ^ Seems pretty straightforward, but solidity will give you a warning
// telling you that you should explicitly declare `storage` or `memory` here.
// So instead, you should declare with the `storage` keyword, like:
Sandwich storage mySandwich = sandwiches[_index];
// ...in which case `mySandwich` is a pointer to `sandwiches[_index]`
// in storage, and...
mySandwich.status = "Eaten!";
// ...this will permanently change `sandwiches[_index]` on the blockchain.
// If you just want a copy, you can use `memory`:
Sandwich memory anotherSandwich = sandwiches[_index + 1];
// ...in which case `anotherSandwich` will simply be a copy of the
// data in memory, and...
anotherSandwich.status = "Eaten!";
// ...will just modify the temporary variable and have no effect
// on `sandwiches[_index + 1]`. But you can do this:
sandwiches[_index + 1] = anotherSandwich;
// ...if you want to copy the changes back into blockchain storage.
}
}Don't worry if you don't fully understand when to use which one yet — throughout this tutorial we'll tell you when to use storage and when to use memory, and the Solidity compiler will also give you warnings to let you know when you should be using one of these keywords.
For now, it's enough to understand that there are cases where you'll need to explicitly declare storage or memory!
calldatais somehow similar to memory, but it's only available toexternalfunctions.
In addition to public and private, Solidity has two more types of visibility for functions: internal and external.
internal is the same as private, except that it's also accessible to contracts that inherit from this contract. (Hey, that sounds like what we want here!).
external is similar to public, except that these functions can ONLY be called outside the contract — they can't be called by other functions inside that contract. We'll talk about why you might want to use external vs public later.
For declaring internal or external functions, the syntax is the same as private and public:
contract Sandwich {
uint private sandwichesEaten = 0;
function eat() internal {
sandwichesEaten++;
}
}
contract BLT is Sandwich {
uint private baconSandwichesEaten = 0;
function eatWithBacon() public returns (string memory) {
baconSandwichesEaten++;
// We can call this here because it's internal
eat();
}
}For our contract to talk to another contract on the blockchain that we don't own, first we need to define an interface.
Let's look at a simple example. Say there was a contract on the blockchain that looked like this:
contract LuckyNumber {
mapping(address => uint) numbers;
function setNum(uint _num) public {
numbers[msg.sender] = _num;
}
function getNum(address _myAddress) public view returns (uint) {
return numbers[_myAddress];
}
}This would be a simple contract where anyone could store their lucky number, and it will be associated with their Ethereum address. Then anyone else could look up that person's lucky number using their address.
Now let's say we had an external contract that wanted to read the data in this contract using the getNum function.
First we'd have to define an interface of the LuckyNumber contract:
contract NumberInterface {
function getNum(address _myAddress) public view returns (uint);
}Notice that this looks like defining a contract, with a few differences. For one, we're only declaring the functions we want to interact with — in this case getNum — and we don't mention any of the other functions or state variables.
Secondly, we're not defining the function bodies. Instead of curly braces ({ and }), we're simply ending the function declaration with a semi-colon (;).
So it kind of looks like a contract skeleton. This is how the compiler knows it's an interface.
By including this interface in our dapp's code our contract knows what the other contract's functions look like, how to call them, and what sort of response to expect. In Solidity you can return more than one value from a function We can interact and use funciton from other smart contract this way, it in a contract as follows:
contract MyContract {
address NumberInterfaceAddress = 0xab38...
// ^ The address of the FavoriteNumber contract on Ethereum
NumberInterface numberContract = NumberInterface(NumberInterfaceAddress);
// Now `numberContract` is pointing to the other contract
function someFunction() public {
// Now we can call `getNum` from that contract:
uint num = numberContract.getNum(msg.sender);
// ...and do something with `num` here
}
}In this way, your contract can interact with any other contract on the Ethereum blockchain, as long they expose those functions as public or external.
If a function returns multiple things then let's look at how to handle them:
function multipleReturns() internal returns(uint a, uint b, uint c) {
return (1, 2, 3);
}
function processMultipleReturns() external {
uint a;
uint b;
uint c;
// This is how you do multiple assignment:
(a, b, c) = multipleReturns();
}
// Or if we only cared about one of the values:
function getLastReturnValue() external {
uint c;
// We can just leave the other fields blank:
(,,c) = multipleReturns();
}If statements in Solidity look just like javascript:
function eatBLT(string memory sandwich) public {
// Remember with strings, we have to compare their keccak256 hashes
// to check equality
if (keccak256(abi.encodePacked(sandwich)) == keccak256(abi.encodePacked("BLT"))) {
eat();
}
}Up until now, Solidity has looked quite similar to other languages like JavaScript. But there are a number of ways that Ethereum DApps are actually quite different from normal applications.
To start with, after you deploy a contract to Ethereum, it’s immutable, which means that it can never be modified or updated again.
The initial code you deploy to a contract is there to stay, permanently, on the blockchain. This is one reason security is such a huge concern in Solidity. If there's a flaw in your contract code, there's no way for you to patch it later. You would have to tell your users to start using a different smart contract address that has the fix.
But this is also a feature of smart contracts. The code is law. If you read the code of a smart contract and verify it, you can be sure that every time you call a function it's going to do exactly what the code says it will do. No one can later change that function and give you unexpected results.
we hard-code contract address into our DApp. But what would happen if a contract had a bug?
It's unlikely, but if this did happen it would render our DApp completely useless — our DApp would point to a hardcoded address that no longer returned and we'd be unable to modify our contract to fix it.
For this reason, it often makes sense to have functions that will allow you to update key portions of the DApp.
OpenZeppelin's Ownable contract Below is the Ownable contract taken from the OpenZeppelin Solidity library. OpenZeppelin is a library of secure and community-vetted smart contracts that you can use in your own DApps. After this lesson, we highly recommend you check out their site to further your learning!
Documentation to OpenZepplin
Give the contract below a read-through. You're going to see a few things we haven't learned yet, but don't worry, we'll talk about them afterward.
/**
* @title Ownable
* @dev The Ownable contract has an owner address, and provides basic authorization control
* functions, this simplifies the implementation of "user permissions".
*/
contract Ownable {
address private _owner;
event OwnershipTransferred(
address indexed previousOwner,
address indexed newOwner
);
/**
* @dev The Ownable constructor sets the original `owner` of the contract to the sender
* account.
*/
constructor() internal {
_owner = msg.sender;
emit OwnershipTransferred(address(0), _owner);
}
/**
* @return the address of the owner.
*/
function owner() public view returns(address) {
return _owner;
}
/**
* @dev Throws if called by any account other than the owner.
*/
modifier onlyOwner() {
require(isOwner());
_;
}
/**
* @return true if `msg.sender` is the owner of the contract.
*/
function isOwner() public view returns(bool) {
return msg.sender == _owner;
}
/**
* @dev Allows the current owner to relinquish control of the contract.
* @notice Renouncing to ownership will leave the contract without an owner.
* It will not be possible to call the functions with the `onlyOwner`
* modifier anymore.
*/
function renounceOwnership() public onlyOwner {
emit OwnershipTransferred(_owner, address(0));
_owner = address(0);
}
/**
* @dev Allows the current owner to transfer control of the contract to a newOwner.
* @param newOwner The address to transfer ownership to.
*/
function transferOwnership(address newOwner) public onlyOwner {
_transferOwnership(newOwner);
}
/**
* @dev Transfers control of the contract to a newOwner.
* @param newOwner The address to transfer ownership to.
*/
function _transferOwnership(address newOwner) internal {
require(newOwner != address(0));
emit OwnershipTransferred(_owner, newOwner);
_owner = newOwner;
}
}A few new things here we haven't seen before:
- Constructors:
constructor()is a constructor, which is an optional special function that has the same name as the contract. It will get executed only one time, when the contract is first created. - Function Modifiers:
modifier onlyOwner(). Modifiers are kind of half-functions that are used to modify other functions, usually to check some requirements prior to execution. In this case,onlyOwnercan be used to limit access so only the owner of the contract can run this function. We'll talk more about function modifiers in the next chapter, and what that weird_;does. indexedkeyword: don't worry about this one, we don't need it yet.
So the Ownable contract basically does the following:
- When a contract is created, its constructor sets the owner to msg.sender (the person who deployed it)
- It adds an onlyOwner modifier, which can restrict access to certain functions to only the owner
- It allows you to transfer the contract to a new owner
onlyOwner is such a common requirement for contracts that most Solidity DApps start with a copy/paste of this Ownable contract, and then their first contract inherits from it once inherited, this applies to any contracts that inherit from first inherited contract in the future as well
A function modifier looks just like a function, but uses the keyword modifier instead of the keyword function. And it can't be called directly like a function can — instead we can attach the modifier's name at the end of a function definition to change that function's behavior.
Let's take a closer look by examining onlyOwner:
pragma solidity >=0.5.0 <0.6.0;
/**
* @title Ownable
* @dev The Ownable contract has an owner address, and provides basic authorization control
* functions, this simplifies the implementation of "user permissions".
*/
contract Ownable {
address private _owner;
event OwnershipTransferred(
address indexed previousOwner,
address indexed newOwner
);
/**
* @dev The Ownable constructor sets the original `owner` of the contract to the sender
* account.
*/
constructor() internal {
_owner = msg.sender;
emit OwnershipTransferred(address(0), _owner);
}
/**
* @return the address of the owner.
*/
function owner() public view returns(address) {
return _owner;
}
/**
* @dev Throws if called by any account other than the owner.
*/
modifier onlyOwner() {
require(isOwner());
_;
}
/**
* @return true if `msg.sender` is the owner of the contract.
*/
function isOwner() public view returns(bool) {
return msg.sender == _owner;
}
/**
* @dev Allows the current owner to relinquish control of the contract.
* @notice Renouncing to ownership will leave the contract without an owner.
* It will not be possible to call the functions with the `onlyOwner`
* modifier anymore.
*/
function renounceOwnership() public onlyOwner {
emit OwnershipTransferred(_owner, address(0));
_owner = address(0);
}
/**
* @dev Allows the current owner to transfer control of the contract to a newOwner.
* @param newOwner The address to transfer ownership to.
*/
function transferOwnership(address newOwner) public onlyOwner {
_transferOwnership(newOwner);
}
/**
* @dev Transfers control of the contract to a newOwner.
* @param newOwner The address to transfer ownership to.
*/
function _transferOwnership(address newOwner) internal {
require(newOwner != address(0));
emit OwnershipTransferred(_owner, newOwner);
_owner = newOwner;
}
}Notice the onlyOwner modifier on the renounceOwnership function. When you call renounceOwnership, the code inside onlyOwner executes first. Then when it hits the _; statement in onlyOwner, it goes back and executes the code inside renounceOwnership.
So while there are other ways you can use modifiers, one of the most common use-cases is to add a quick require check before a function executes.
In the case of onlyOwner, adding this modifier to a function makes it so only the owner of the contract (you, if you deployed it) can call that function.
Note: Giving the owner special powers over the contract like this is often necessary, but it could also be used maliciously. For example, the owner could add a backdoor function that would allow him to transfer anyone's assests to himself!
So it's important to remember that just because a DApp is on Ethereum does not automatically mean it's decentralized — you have to actually read the full source code to make sure it's free of special controls by the owner that you need to potentially worry about. There's a careful balance as a developer between maintaining control over a DApp such that you can fix potential bugs, and building an owner-less platform that your users can trust to secure their data.
In Solidity, your users have to pay every time they execute a function on your DApp using a currency called gas. Users buy gas with Ether (the currency on Ethereum), so your users have to spend ETH in order to execute functions on your DApp.
How much gas is required to execute a function depends on how complex that function's logic is. Each individual operation has a gas cost based roughly on how much computing resources will be required to perform that operation (e.g. writing to storage is much more expensive than adding two integers). The total gas cost of your function is the sum of the gas costs of all its individual operations.
Because running functions costs real money for your users, code optimization is much more important in Ethereum than in other programming languages.
Ethereum is like a big, slow, but extremely secure computer. When you execute a function, every single node on the network needs to run that same function to verify its output — thousands of nodes verifying every function execution is what makes Ethereum decentralized, and its data immutable and censorship-resistant.
The creators of Ethereum wanted to make sure someone couldn't clog up the network with an infinite loop, or hog all the network resources with really intensive computations. So they made it so transactions aren't free, and users have to pay for computation time as well as storage.
Note: This isn't necessarily true for other blockchains
Earlier we mentioned that there are other types of uints: uint8, uint16, uint32, etc. Normally there's no benefit to using these sub-types because Solidity reserves 256 bits of storage regardless of the uint size. For example, using uint8 instead of uint (uint256) won't save you any gas.
But there's an exception to this: inside structs.
If you have multiple uints inside a struct, using a smaller-sized uint when possible will allow Solidity to pack these variables together to take up less storage. For example:
struct NormalStruct {
uint a;
uint b;
uint c;
}
struct MiniMe {
uint32 a;
uint32 b;
uint c;
}
// `mini` will cost less gas than `normal` because of struct packing
NormalStruct normal = NormalStruct(10, 20, 30);
MiniMe mini = MiniMe(10, 20, 30); For this reason, inside a struct you'll want to use the smallest integer sub-types you can get away with.
You'll also want to cluster identical data types together (i.e. put them next to each other in the struct) so that Solidity can minimize the required storage space. For example, a struct with fields uint c; uint32 a; uint32 b; will cost less gas than a struct with fields uint32 a; uint c; uint32 b; because the uint32 fields are clustered together.
Solidity provides some native units for dealing with time.
The variable now will return the current unix timestamp of the latest block (the number of seconds that have passed since January 1st 1970). The unix time as I write this is 1515527488
Note: Unix time is traditionally stored in a 32-bit number. This will lead to the "Year 2038" problem, when 32-bit unix timestamps will overflow and break a lot of legacy systems. So if we wanted our DApp to keep running 20 years from now, we could use a 64-bit number instead — but our users would have to spend more gas to use our DApp in the meantime. Design decisions!
Solidity also contains the time units seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and years. These will convert to a uint of the number of seconds in that length of time. So 1 minutes is 60, 1 hours is 3600 (60 seconds x 60 minutes), 1 days is 86400 (24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds), etc.
Here's an example of how these time units can be useful:
uint lastUpdated;
// Set `lastUpdated` to `now`
function updateTimestamp() public {
lastUpdated = now;
}
// Will return `true` if 5 minutes have passed since `updateTimestamp` was
// called, `false` if 5 minutes have not passed
function fiveMinutesHavePassed() public view returns (bool) {
return (now >= (lastUpdated + 5 minutes));
}Previously we looked at the simple example of onlyOwner. But function modifiers can also take arguments. For example:
// A mapping to store a user's age:
mapping (uint => uint) public age;
// Modifier that requires this user to be older than a certain age:
modifier olderThan(uint _age, uint _userId) {
require(age[_userId] >= _age);
_;
}
// Must be older than 16 to drive a car (in the US, at least).
// We can call the `olderThan` modifier with arguments like so:
function driveCar(uint _userId) public olderThan(16, _userId) {
// Some function logic
}You can see here that the olderThan modifier takes arguments just like a function does. And that the driveCar function passes its arguments to the modifier.
view functions don't cost any gas when they're called externally by a user.
This is because view functions don't actually change anything on the blockchain – they only read the data. So marking a function with view tells web3.js that it only needs to query your local Ethereum node to run the function, and it doesn't actually have to create a transaction on the blockchain (which would need to be run on every single node, and cost gas).
We'll cover setting up web3.js with your own node later. But for now the big takeaway is that you can optimize your DApp's gas usage for your users by using read-only external view functions wherever possible.
Note: If a view function is called internally from another function in the same contract that is not a view function, it will still cost gas. This is because the other function creates a transaction on Ethereum, and will still need to be verified from every node. So view functions are only free when they're called externally.
One of the more expensive operations in Solidity is using storage — particularly writes.
This is because every time you write or change a piece of data, it’s written permanently to the blockchain. Forever! Thousands of nodes across the world need to store that data on their hard drives, and this amount of data keeps growing over time as the blockchain grows. So there's a cost to doing that.
In order to keep costs down, you want to avoid writing data to storage except when absolutely necessary. Sometimes this involves seemingly inefficient programming logic — like rebuilding an array in memory every time a function is called instead of simply saving that array in a variable for quick lookups.
In most programming languages, looping over large data sets is expensive. But in Solidity, this is way cheaper than using storage if it's in an external view function, since view functions don't cost your users any gas. (And gas costs your users real money!).
You can use the memory keyword with arrays to create a new array inside a function without needing to write anything to storage. The array will only exist until the end of the function call, and this is a lot cheaper gas-wise than updating an array in storage — free if it's a view function called externally.
Here's how to declare an array in memory:
function getArray() external pure returns(uint[] memory) {
// Instantiate a new array in memory with a length of 3
uint[] memory values = new uint[](3);
// Put some values to it
values[0] = 1;
values[1] = 2;
values[2] = 3;
return values;
}This is a trivial example just to show you the syntax, we can combine this with for loops for real use-cases.
Note: memory arrays must be created with a length argument (in this example, 3). They currently cannot be resized like storage arrays can with
array.push(), although this may be changed in a future version of Solidity.
Sometimes we want to use a for loop to build the contents of an array in a function rather than simply saving that array to storage. The syntax of for loops in Solidity is similar to JavaScript.
Let's look at an example where we want to make an array of even numbers:
function getEvens() pure external returns(uint[] memory) {
uint[] memory evens = new uint[](5);
// Keep track of the index in the new array:
uint counter = 0;
// Iterate 1 through 10 with a for loop:
for (uint i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
// If `i` is even...
if (i % 2 == 0) {
// Add it to our array
evens[counter] = i;
// Increment counter to the next empty index in `evens`:
counter++;
}
}
return evens;
}This function will return an array with the contents [2, 4, 6, 8, 10].
The payable Modifier
payable functions are part of what makes Solidity and Ethereum so cool — they are a special type of function that can receive Ether.
When you call an API function on a normal web server, you can't send US dollars along with your function call — nor can you send Bitcoin.
But in Ethereum, because both the money (Ether), the data (transaction payload), and the contract code itself all live on Ethereum, it's possible for you to call a function and pay money to the contract at the same time.
This allows for some really interesting logic, like requiring a certain payment to the contract in order to execute a function. Example
contract OnlineStore {
function buySomething() external payable {
// Check to make sure 0.001 ether was sent to the function call:
require(msg.value == 0.001 ether);
// If so, some logic to transfer the digital item to the caller of the function:
transferThing(msg.sender);
}
}Here, msg.value is a way to see how much Ether was sent to the contract, and ether is a built-in unit.
What happens here is that someone would call the function from web3.js (from the DApp's JavaScript front-end) as follows:
// Assuming `OnlineStore` points to your contract on Ethereum:
OnlineStore.buySomething({from: web3.eth.defaultAccount, value: web3.utils.toWei(0.001)}Notice the
valuefield, where the javascript function call specifies how muchetherto send (0.001). If you think of the transaction like an envelope, and the parameters you send to the function call are the contents of the letter you put inside, then adding avalueis like putting cash inside the envelope — the letter and the money get delivered together to the recipient.
After you send Ether to a contract, it gets stored in the contract's Ethereum account, and it will be trapped there — unless you add a function to withdraw the Ether from the contract. You can write a function to withdraw Ether from the contract as follows:
contract GetPaid is Ownable {
function withdraw() external onlyOwner {
address payable _owner = address(uint160(owner()));
_owner.transfer(address(this).balance);
}
}Note that we're using owner() and onlyOwner from the Ownable contract, assuming that was imported.
It is important to note that you cannot transfer Ether to an address unless that address is of type address payable. But the _owner variable is of type uint160, meaning that we must explicitly cast it to address payable.
Once you cast the address from uint160 to address payable, you can transfer Ether to that address using the transfer function, and address(this).balance will return the total balance stored on the contract. So if 100 users had paid 1 Ether to our contract, address(this).balance would equal 100 Ether.
You can use transfer to send funds to any Ethereum address. For example, you could have a function that transfers Ether back to the msg.sender if they overpaid for an item:
uint itemFee = 0.001 ether;
msg.sender.transfer(msg.value - itemFee);Or in a contract with a buyer and a seller, you could save the seller's address in storage, then when someone purchases his item, transfer him the fee paid by the buyer:
seller.transfer(msg.value).
These are some examples of what makes Ethereum programming really cool — you can have decentralized marketplaces like this that aren't controlled by anyone.