The ethers npm package is a library that provides a set of tools to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to connect to the Ethereum network, manage wallets and keys, interact with smart contracts, and perform various other blockchain-related operations.

What are ethers's main functionalities?

Connecting to Ethereum Network

This code sample demonstrates how to connect to the Ethereum network using ethers with an Infura provider.

const { ethers } = require('ethers');
const provider = new ethers.providers.JsonRpcProvider('https://mainnet.infura.io/v3/YOUR_INFURA_API_KEY');

Wallet Management

This code sample shows how to create a new wallet from a private key and connect it to an Ethereum provider.

const { ethers } = require('ethers');
const wallet = new ethers.Wallet('YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY');
const connectedWallet = wallet.connect(provider);

Interacting with Smart Contracts

This code sample illustrates how to interact with a smart contract by creating a contract instance and calling one of its functions.

const { ethers } = require('ethers');
const abi = [...] // Contract ABI
const contractAddress = '0x...'; // Contract address
const contract = new ethers.Contract(contractAddress, abi, provider);
const value = await contract.someFunction();

Sending Transactions

This code sample demonstrates how to send a transaction to the Ethereum network using a wallet instance.

const { ethers } = require('ethers');
const tx = {
  to: '0x...',
  value: ethers.utils.parseEther('1.0'),
  gasLimit: 21000,
  gasPrice: ethers.utils.parseUnits('10', 'gwei')
};
const sendPromise = wallet.sendTransaction(tx);

Querying Blockchain Data

This code sample shows how to query blockchain data, such as retrieving the latest block number and details of a specific block.

const { ethers } = require('ethers');
const blockNumber = await provider.getBlockNumber();
const block = await provider.getBlock(blockNumber);

Other packages similar to ethers

The Ethers Project

npm bundle size (version) npm (downloads)

A complete, compact and simple library for Ethereum and ilk, written in TypeScript.

Features

Keep your private keys in your client, safe and sound
Import and export JSON wallets (Geth, Parity and crowdsale)
Import and export BIP 39 mnemonic phrases (12 word backup phrases) and HD Wallets (English as well as Czech, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese)
Meta-classes create JavaScript objects from any contract ABI, including ABIv2 and Human-Readable ABI
Connect to Ethereum nodes over JSON-RPC, INFURA, Etherscan, Alchemy, Ankr or MetaMask
ENS names are first-class citizens; they can be used anywhere an Ethereum addresses can be used
Small (~144kb compressed; 460kb uncompressed)
Tree-shaking focused; include only what you need during bundling
Complete functionality for all your Ethereum desires
Extensive documentation
Large collection of test cases which are maintained and added to
Fully written in TypeScript, with strict types for security and safety
MIT License (including ALL dependencies); completely open source to do with as you please

Keep Updated

For advisories and important notices, follow @ethersproject on Twitter (low-traffic, non-marketing, important information only) as well as watch this GitHub project.

For more general news, discussions, and feedback, follow or DM me, @ricmoo on Twitter or on the Ethers Discord.

For the latest changes, see the CHANGELOG.

Summaries

Installing

NodeJS

/home/ricmoo/some_project> npm install ethers

Browser (ESM)

The bundled library is available in the ./dist/ folder in this repo.

<script type="module">
    import { ethers } from "./dist/ethers.min.js";
</script>

Documentation

Browse the documentation online:

Providers

Ethers works closely with an ever-growing list of third-party providers to ensure getting started is quick and easy, by providing default keys to each service.

These built-in keys mean you can use ethers.getDefaultProvider() and start developing right away.

However, the API keys provided to ethers are also shared and are intentionally throttled to encourage developers to eventually get their own keys, which unlock many other features, such as faster responses, more capacity, analytics and other features like archival data.

When you are ready to sign up and start using for your own keys, please check out the Provider API Keys in the documentation.

A special thanks to these services for providing community resources:

Extension Packages

The ethers package only includes the most common and most core functionality to interact with Ethereum. There are many other packages designed to further enhance the functionality and experience.

MulticallProvider - A Provider which bundles multiple call requests into a single call to reduce latency and backend request capacity
MulticoinPlugin - A Provider plugin to expand the support of ENS coin types
GanaceProvider - A Provider for in-memory node instances, for fast debugging, testing and simulating blockchain operations
Optimism Utilities - A collection of Optimism utilities
LedgerSigner - A Signer to interact directly with Ledger Hardware Wallets

License

MIT License (including all dependencies).

Keywords

FAQs

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Package last updated on 13 Jan 2024

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