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

Address global variables


Every address—externally owned or contract-based, has five global functions and a single global variable. These functions and variables will be explored in depth in subsequent chapters on Solidify functions. The global variable related to the address is called balance and it provides the current balance of Ether in wei available at the address.

The functions are as follows:

  • <address>.transfer(uint256 amount): This function sends the given amount of wei to address, throws on failure
  • <address>.send(uint256 amount) returns (bool): This function sends the given amount of wei to address, and returns false on failure
  • <address>.call(...) returns (bool): This function issues a low-level call, and returns false on failure
  • <address>.callcode(...) returns (bool): This function issues a low-level callcode, and returns false on failure
  • <address>.delegatecall(...) returns (bool): This function issues a low-level delegatecall, and returns false on failure...