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

Chapter 9. Truffle Basics and Unit Testing

Programming languages need a rich ecosystem of tools that eases development. Like any application, even blockchain based decentralized applications should have a minimal Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. It is important for any application to have a process of build, test, and deploy continuously. Solidity is a programming language and needs support from other tools to ensure that developers can develop, build, test, and deploy contracts with ease rather than going through the painful process of deploying and testing them. This improves their productivity and eventually helps bring the application to market faster, better, and cheaper. It is also possible to introduce DevOps for smart contracts with the help of such tools. Truffle is one such development, testing, and deployment utility that can make these activities a breeze.

This chapter covers the following topics: 

  • Application development life cycle management
  • Understanding and installing...