<divclass="link title"><ahref="/v5/">Documentation</a></div><divclass="base show link depth-1"><ahref="/v5/getting-started/">Getting Started</a></div><divclass="base show link depth-1"><ahref="/v5/concepts/">Ethereum Basics</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/concepts/events/">Events</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/concepts/gas/">Gas</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/concepts/security/">Security</a></div><divclass="base show link depth-1"><ahref="/v5/api/">Application Programming Interface</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/api/contract/">Contract Interaction</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/contract/contract/">Contract</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/contract/contract-factory/">ContractFactory</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/contract/example/">Example: ERC-20 Contract</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/api/signer/">Signers</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/api/providers/">Providers</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/providers/provider/">Provider</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/providers/jsonrpc-provider/">JsonRpcProvider</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/providers/api-providers/">API Providers</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/providers/other/">Other Providers</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/providers/types/">Types</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/">Utilities</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/abi/">Application Binary Interface</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/abi/coder/">AbiCoder</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/abi/formats/">ABI Formats</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/abi/fragments/">Fragments</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/abi/interface/">Interface</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/address/">Addresses</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/bignumber/">BigNumber</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/bytes/">Byte Manipulation</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/constants/">Constants</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/display-logic/">Display Logic and Input</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/encoding/">Encoding Utilities</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/fixednumber/">FixedNumber</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/hashing/">Hashing Algorithms</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/hdnode/">HD Wallet</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/logger/">Logging</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/properties/">Property Utilities</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/signing-key/">Signing Key</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/strings/">Strings</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/transactions/">Transactions</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/web/">Web Utilities</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/utils/wordlists/">Wordlists</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/api/other/">Other Libraries</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/other/assembly/">Assembly</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/other/assembly/dialect/">Ethers ASM Dialect</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/other/assembly/api/">Utilities</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-4"><ahref="/v5/api/other/assembly/ast/">Abstract Syntax Tree</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-3"><ahref="/v5/api/other/hardware/">Hardware Wallets</a></div><divclass="hide link depth-2"><ahref="/v5/api/experiment
<aname="contributing"></a><aname="contributing"></a><h1class="show-anchors"><div>Contributing and Hacking<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing"></a></div></div></h1><p>The ethers.js library is something that I've written out of necessity, and has grown somewhat organically over time.</p>
<p>Many things are the way they are for good (at the time, at least) reasons, but I always welcome criticism, and am completely willing to have my mind changed on things.</p>
<p>So, pull requests are always welcome, but please keep a few points in mind:</p>
<p><ul><li>Backwards-compatibility-breaking changes will not be accepted; they may be considered for the next major version </li><li>Security is important; adding dependencies require fairly convincing arguments as to why </li><li>The library aims to be lean, so keep an eye on the dist/ethers.min.js file size before and after your changes </li><li>Add test cases for both expected and unexpected input </li><li>Any new features need to be supported by me (future issues, documentation, testing, migration), so anything that is overly complicated or specific may not be accepted </li></ul></p>
<p>In general, <b>please start an issue <i>before</i> beginning a pull request</b>, so we can have a public discussion and figure out the best way to address to problem/feature. <b>:)</b></p>
<aname="contributing--building"></a><aname="contributing--contributing--building"></a><h2class="show-anchors"><div>Building<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing--building"></a></div></div></h2><p>If you wish to modify the source code, there are a few steps involved in setting up your environment.</p>
<p>Since the library uses a monorepo, you must install an initial required set of libraries, which can then be used to install the remaining libraries used within each package, as well as link all the packages within the repo with each other.</p>
<divclass="code-title"><div>Preparing for builds</div></div><divclass="code"># Clone the repository
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run bootstrap</div><aname="contributing--updating"></a><aname="contributing--contributing--updating"></a><h2class="show-anchors"><div>Making your changes<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing--updating"></a></div></div></h2><p>TODO: Add more information here.</p>
<divclass="code-title"><div>Watching and Building</div></div><divclass="code"># Begin watching the files and re-building whenever they change
# Sometimes the issue only affects the ESM modules
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run auto-build-esm
# Or if you only need to run a single build
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run _build-cjs
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run _build-esm</div><divclass="code-title"><div>Testing</div></div><divclass="code"># Rebuilds all files and bundles testcases up for testing
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run _test-node</div><divclass="code-title"><div>Preparing the Distribution</div></div><divclass="code">/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run update-version</div><aname="contributing--documentation"></a><aname="contributing--contributing--documentation"></a><h2class="show-anchors"><div>Documentation<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing--documentation"></a></div></div></h2><p>The documents are generated using <ahref="/v5/documentation/">Flatworm</a> documentation generation tool, which was written for the purpose of writing the documentation for ethers.</p>
<p>Style Guide (this section will have much more coming):</p>
<p><ul><li>Try to keep lines no longer than <i>around</i> 80 characters </li><li>Avoid inline links in the source; use the <codeclass="inline">externalLinks</code> field in the config.js </li><li>Prefix external links with <codeclass="inline">link-</code></li><li>Changing an anchor name must be well justified, as it will break all existing links to that section; flatworm will support symblinks in the future </li><li>In general, I aim for xonsistency; look to similar situations throughout the documentation </li></ul></p>
<aname="contributing--contributing--documentation--building"></a><h3class="show-anchors"><div>Building<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing--contributing--documentation--building"></a></div></div></h3><p>To build the documentation, you should first follow the <ahref="/v5/contributing/#contributing--building">above steps</a> to build the ethers library.</p>
<p>Building the docs will generate several types of output:</p>
<p><ul><li>A full set of HTML pages, linking across each other </li><li>A single one-page HTML page with all pages linking to local anchors </li><li>A full set of README.md pages organized to be browsable and linkable in GitHub </li><li>A metadata dump for tool ingestion (still needs more work) </li><li>(@TODO; only half done) The documentation as a LaTeX and generated PDF </li></ul></p>
<divclass="code-title"><div>Building the Documentations</div></div><divclass="code">/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run build-docs</div><aname="contributing--contributing--documentation--evaluation"></a><h3class="show-anchors"><div>Evaluation<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing--contributing--documentation--evaluation"></a></div></div></h3><p>When building the documentation, all code samples are run through a JavaScript VM to ensure there are no typos in the example code, as well the exact output of results are injected into the output, so there is no need to keep the results and code in-sync.</p>
<p>However, this can be a bit of a headache when making many small changes, so to build the documentation faster, you can skip the evaluation step, which will inject the code directly.</p>
<divclass="code-title"><div>Build docs skipping evaluation</div></div><divclass="code">/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run build-docs -- --skip-eval</div><aname="contributing--contributing--documentation--previewing-changes"></a><h3class="show-anchors"><div>Previewing Changes<divclass="anchors"><aclass="self"href="/v5/contributing/#contributing--contributing--documentation--previewing-changes"></a></div></div></h3><p>To preview the changes locally, you can use any standard web server and run from the <codeclass="inline">/docs/</code> folder, or use the built-in web server.</p>
<p>The same caveats as normal web development apply, such flushing browser caches after changing (and re-building) the docs.</p>
<divclass="code-title"><div>Running a webserver</div></div><divclass="code">/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run serve-docs</div>
<divclass="copyright">The content of this site is licensed under the <ahref="https://choosealicense.com/licenses/cc-by-4.0/">Creative Commons License</a>. Generated on July 5, 2020, 12:0am.</div>
