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.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Summary


Expressions and control structures are an integral part of any programming language and they are an important element of the Solidity language as well. Solidity provides a rich infrastructure for decision and looping constructs. It provides if...else decision control structures and the for, do...while, and while loops for looping over data variables that can be iterated. Solidity also allows us to write conditions and  logical, assignment, and other types of statement any that programming language supports.

The following chapter will discuss Solidity and contract functions in detail; these are core elements for writing contracts. Blockchain is about executing and storing transactions and transactions are created when contract functions are executed. Functions can change the state of Ethereum or just return the current state. Functions that change state and those that return—current state will be discussed in detail in the following chapter.