hardhat-cli-utils

Hardhat CLI Utils

This repository contains many predefined hardhat tasks as hardhat subcommands to help you play with smart contracts by CLI.

Task	Description
balance	Get the balance of given account
chain-id	Get the chain ID of network
deploy	Deploy contract
estimate	Estimate gas for calling contract on given address
read	Call (read) the method of contract on given address
write	Call (write) the method of contract on given address
nonce	Get the nonce of given account
bytecode	Get the runtime byte code on given contract address
initcode	Get the creation byte code (excluding constructor parameters part)
dig	Resolve given ENS domain name
send	Send Ether to given account
version-pragma	Change version pragmas of solidity files in batch

Installation

npm install --save-dev hardhat-cli-utils

And add the following statement to your hardhat.config.js:

const hcu = require("hardhat-cli-utils");
hcu.registerAll();

Or, if you are using TypeScript, add this to your hardhat.config.ts:

import hcu from "hardhat-cli-utils";
hcu.registerAll();

hcu.registerAll will register all subcommands predefined in this package.

There are also additional ways to register subcommands more specifically.

You can use hcu.register to explicitly specify which commands you want to register. For example,

hcu.register(['read', 'write', 'dig', 'deploy']); // Register these 4 only

You can use hcu.registerExcluding to register all subcommands apart from what you list. For example, you might prefer the deploy subcommand provided by hardhat-deploy instead of this package, so you write the following statement to avoid conflict.

hcu.registerExcluding(['deploy']);

Usage by Examples

Let's suppose you have Box contract in your hardhat project.

contract Box {
    uint private value;
    constructor(uint initValue)  {
        value  = initValue;
    }
    function getValue() public view returns(uint) {
        return value;
    }
    function setValue(uint newValue) public {
        value = newValue;
    }
}

And you have set up a test-net environment, in our example, Goerli.

// hardhat.config.js or hardhat.config.ts
const config = {
  networks: {
    goerli: {
      url: "REPLACE_THIS_WITH_YOUR_RPC_URL",
      accounts: ["REPLACE_THIS_WITH_YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY"]
    },
  }
}

deploy

Run with npx hardhat --network <network> deploy <class> [...params].

On success, the address of contract created is outputted.

$ npx hardhat --network goerli deploy Box 123
0xb62208Cf91f8654D1Baa7Af12d1C6f7ad655dcd8

read

Run with npx hardhat --network <network> read <class> <address> <method> [...params].

On success, the returned result is showed.

$ npx hardhat --network goerli read Box 0xb62208Cf91f8654D1Baa7Af12d1C6f7ad655dcd8 getValue
Return:  BigNumber { value: "123" }

write

Run with npx hardhat --network <network> write <class> <address> <method> [...params].

On success, it output the link to view this transaction on Etherscan . If there are events emitted during this transaction, then the events are showed.

$ npx hardhat --network goerli write Box 0xb62208Cf91f8654D1Baa7Af12d1C6f7ad655dcd8 setValue 456
View this tx at https://goerli.etherscan.io/tx/0x32e051dc4f3d20395b00b3715a23e908d5eaa4010ba237214f385676ff3c80bd
No event emitted.
Done!

nonce

Run with npx hardhat --network <network> nonce <address>.

Output the nonce of given account.

$ npx hardhat --network goerli nonce 0xb62208Cf91f8654D1Baa7Af12d1C6f7ad655dcd8
1

initcode

For the creation byte code of a contract of given class, run npx hardhat initcode <class>.

$ npx hardhat initcode Box
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

Contracts with Libraries

Some contracts need to be linked with libraries before they are deployed. In such case, the output will not be pure hex string. Instead, the output contains a placeholder in which the library contract address should be filled.(See related section in Solidity Docs) For example, an output may be like this: (Notice the two $ symbols in bytecode)

0x608060405234801561001057600080fd5b50610192806100206000396000f3fe608060405234801561001057600080fd5b506004361061002b5760003560e01c8063165c4a1614610030575b600080fd5b61004361003e3660046100fd565b610064565b604080519283526001600160a01b0390911660208301520160405180910390f35b6040516332292b2760e21b81526004810183905260248101829052600090819073__$118fb7ce387586ecccae2b5c8d4a11c6b1$__9063c8a4ac9c90604401604080518083038186803b1580156100ba57600080fd5b505af41580156100ce573d6000803e3d6000fd5b505050506040513d601f19601f820116820180604052508101906100f2919061011f565b915091509250929050565b6000806040838503121561011057600080fd5b50508035926020909101359150565b6000806040838503121561013257600080fd5b825160208401519092506001600160a01b038116811461015157600080fd5b80915050925092905056fea26469706673582212207fee896a627c16dca0cfa37edb26a96e129bc36672aabb59ce8f9ab5cdc7143664736f6c63430008090033

After replacing __$118fb7ce387586ecccae2b5c8d4a11c6b1$__ with the library contract address, you get the actual creation code.

bytecode

For the runtime byte code of a contract at given address, run npx hardhat --network <network> bytecode <address>.

$ npx hardhat --network goerli bytecode 0xb62208Cf91f8654D1Baa7Af12d1C6f7ad655dcd8
0x6080604052348015600f57600080fd5b506004361060325760003560e01c8063209652551460375780635524107714604c575b600080fd5b60005460405190815260200160405180910390f35b605c6057366004605e565b600055565b005b600060208284031215606f57600080fd5b503591905056fea2646970667358221220b23e771e24a1806f389a28918dce80947911d0a0243543ea7af07c813207c99564736f6c63430008090033

For the runtime byte code of a contract of given class, run npx hardhat bytecode <class>.

$ npx hardhat bytecode Box
# The output is the same, so omitted...

Contracts with Libraries

Similar to the situation of the initcode command, if your contract need to be linked with libraries, the output will contain an address placeholder.

dig

$ npx hardhat --network goerli dig example.eth
0x9548650b6A1775d3d411D625207519b7Fe227A5a

version-pragma

If you want change the version pragma in all solidity files to the following:

pragma solidity ^0.8.0;

then you can run

$ npx hardhat version-pragma "^0.8.0"

WARNING This subcommand may damage the compatibility of your project since it will modify your source files. Because it simply uses regular expression to replace all matching cases. No further syntax check is used. Make sure you can roll back the project in case of any unexpected modification before running this subcommand.

Other subcommands

We are not covering usage of all subcommands, but you can run npx hardhat <task name> --help for their usage.

$ npx hardhat balance --help

storage-layout

To use this feature, you need edit your hardhat.config.js file. For example:

const config: HardhatUserConfig = {
  solidity: {
    compilers: [
      {
        version: "0.8.17",
        settings: {
          // This field is required to to make the storage layout script work
          outputSelection: {
            "*": {
                "*": ["storageLayout"],
            },
          }
        }
      }
    ],
  },
}

Looking for other features?

Well, there are also many other awesome packages extending hardhat CLI, such as

• verify

  hardhat-etherscan can help you verify and publish contract source code on Etherscan.

• prepend-spdx-license

  Hardhat SPDX License Identifier can help you prepend local Solidity source files with an SPDX License Identifier.

Or, any contribution to this repository is welcome :-)