Book Image

Solidity Programming Essentials

Book Image

Solidity Programming Essentials

Overview of this book

Solidity is a contract-oriented language whose syntax is highly influenced by JavaScript, and is designed to compile code for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Solidity Programming Essentials will be your guide to understanding Solidity programming to build smart contracts for Ethereum and blockchain from ground-up. We begin with a brief run-through of blockchain, Ethereum, and their most important concepts or components. You will learn how to install all the necessary tools to write, test, and debug Solidity contracts on Ethereum. Then, you will explore the layout of a Solidity source file and work with the different data types. The next set of recipes will help you work with operators, control structures, and data structures while building your smart contracts. We take you through function calls, return types, function modifers, and recipes in object-oriented programming with Solidity. Learn all you can on event logging and exception handling, as well as testing and debugging smart contracts. By the end of this book, you will be able to write, deploy, and test smart contracts in Ethereum. This book will bring forth the essence of writing contracts using Solidity and also help you develop Solidity skills in no time.

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Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Contributors
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to Blockchain, Ethereum, and Smart Contracts
Introduction to Blockchain, Ethereum, and Smart Contracts
What is a blockchain?
Why blockchains?
Cryptography
Ether
Gas
Blockchain and Ethereum architecture
Ethereum nodes
Ethereum accounts
Transactions
Blocks
An end-to-end transaction
What is a contract?
What is a smart contract?
How are contracts deployed?
Summary
2
Installing Ethereum and Solidity
Installing Ethereum and Solidity
Ethereum networks
Geth
Creating a private network
ganache-cli
Solidity compiler
The web3 JavaScript library
Mist wallet
MetaMask
Summary
3
Introducing Solidity
Introducing Solidity
Ethereum Virtual Machine
Solidity and Solidity files
Structure of a contract
Data types in Solidity
Storage and memory data locations
Literals
Integers
Boolean
The byte data type
Arrays
Structure of an array
Enumerations
Address
Mappings
Summary
4
Global Variables and Functions
Global Variables and Functions
The var type variables
Variables hoisting
Variable scoping
Type conversion
Block and transaction global variables
Cryptography global variables
Address global variables
Contract global variables
Summary
5
Expressions and Control Structures
Expressions and Control Structures
Solidity expressions
The if decision control
The while loop
The for loop
The do...while loop
The break statement
The continue statement
The return statement
Summary
6
Writing Smart Contracts
Writing Smart Contracts
Smart contracts
Writing a simple contract
Creating contracts
Constructors
Contract composition
Inheritance
Encapsulation
Polymorphism
Method overriding
Abstract contracts
Interfaces
Summary
7
Functions, Modifiers, and Fallbacks
Functions, Modifiers, and Fallbacks
Function input and output
Modifiers
The view, constant, and pure functions
The address functions
The fallback function
Summary
8
Exceptions, Events, and Logging
Exceptions, Events, and Logging
Error handling
Events and logging
Summary
9
Truffle Basics and Unit Testing
Truffle Basics and Unit Testing
Application development life cycle management
Truffle
Development with Truffle
Testing with Truffle
Summary
10
Debugging Contracts
Debugging Contracts
Debugging
Using a Block Explorer
Summary
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Index
Index

Blocks

Blocks are an important concept in Ethereum. Blocks are containers for a transaction. A block contains multiple transactions. Each block has a different number of transactions based on gas limit and block size. Gas limit will be explained in detail in later sections. The blocks are chained together to form a blockchain. Each block has a parent block and it stores the hash of the parent block in its header. Only the first block, known as the genesis block, does not have a parent.

A typical block in Ethereum is shown in the following screenshot:

There are a lot of properties associated with a block, providing insights and metadata about it, and following are some of important properties along with their descriptions:

  • The difficulty property determines the complexity of the puzzle/challenge given to miners for this block.
  • The gasLimit property determines the maximum gas allowed. This helps in determining how many transactions can be part of the block.
  • The gasUsed property refers to the actual gas used for this block for executing all transactions in it.
  • The hash property refers to the hash of the block.
  • The nonce property refers to the number that helps in solving the challenge.
  • The minerproperty is the account identifier of the miner, also known as coinbase or etherbase.
  • The number property is the sequential number of this block on the chain.
  • The parentHash property refers to the parent block's hash.
  • The receiptsRoot, stateRoot, and transactionsRoot properties refer to Merkle trees discussed during the mining process.
  • The transactions property refers to an array of transactions that are part of this block.
  • The totalDifficulty property refers to the total difficulty of the chain.
Previous Section
End of Section 11
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