OpenZeppelin SDK is not being actively developed. We recommend using Upgrades Plugins instead. For more information, see Building for interoperability: why we’re focusing on Upgrades Plugins.

Using the OpenZeppelin CLI With Truffle

Truffle is a framework for writing, compiling, deploying and testing smart contracts. You’ll notice we haven’t used it so far - this is because the OpenZeppelin tools are self-sufficient. It brings its own compiler along, its own habits and best practices, its own configuration files, and with some of the starter kits even its own UI elements and frameworks. But what if you’re used to Truffle and prefer it for the additional features it can offer? Do you need to pick between the OpenZeppelin CLI and Truffle now?

That’s a definitive No, captain. Let’s see how we can use them together.

This tutorial assumes you’ve gone through the basic SDK guide and have at least a passing familiarity with Truffle.

Prerequisites

We’ll assume that you have:

  • NodeJS and NPM installed, preferably via NVM

  • Ganache installed and available on the command line via ganache-cli

  • OpenZeppelin SDK installed and available on the command line, either globally or via NPX

All of these conditions should be met if you’ve gone through the basic guide, so if you haven’t please do so now.

If you have installed OpenZeppelin SDK globally, you will have to either install it again locally (npm install @openzeppelin/cli) or link to it with npm link @openzeppelin/cli which creates a symlink from the globally installed module to your local folder (works on newer versions of Windows 10, too). This is because there’s no easier way to import globally installed Node modules into local scripts.

Configuration

When initializing a project with OpenZeppelin SDK, you’ll get a network.js file containing something like this:

module.exports = {
  networks: {
    development: {
      protocol: 'http',
      host: 'localhost',
      port: 8545,
      gas: 5000000,
      gasPrice: 5e9,
      networkId: '*',
    },
  },
};

This configuration makes OpenZeppelin SDK default to a locally running instance of a blockchain, usually Ganache. With Truffle, the configuration is in truffle-config.js or truffle.js, so in most cases all you need to integrate the two is just make sure that file exists. If it does, OpenZeppelin SDK will default to reading that one for network settings and offer those network names to you when you invoke CLI commands. That said, let’s look at ways to integrate the two.

Adding Truffle to an OpenZeppelin SDK project

In your example project (the one created by the basic guide), run npm install truffle. Alternatively, have Truffle installed globally so it’s accessible from everywhere (npm install -g truffle) without having to run it with npx. We’ll use the npx approach in this guide - it makes it possible to use a specific Truffle version per project.

Once Truffle is installed, run truffle init in the project folder to initialize the project, or manually create the truffle-config.js file.

if you say yes when asked to overwrite an existing folder, e.g. if you already had a contracts folder, the contents of that folder will be deleted! The recommended approach is making a backup copy of the contracts folder, running truffle init with overwrites, and then merging the contents of the two folders later.

If you used init, you should now have a very verbose truffle-config.js file in your project directory which, when the commented out examples are stripped out, comes down to this:

module.exports = {
  networks: {
    development: {
     host: "127.0.0.1",
     port: 8545,
     network_id: "*",
    },
  },

  compilers: {
    solc: {
      version: "0.5.2",
      docker: false,
      settings: {
       optimizer: {
         enabled: true,
         runs: 200
       },
       evmVersion: "byzantium"
      }
    }
  }
}

If you created truffle-config.js from scratch, paste this in. If not, feel free to just uncomment the relevant lines or just paste this over everything. We can now delete OpenZeppelin’s networks.js file.

You should also have a file contracts/Migrations.sol. If you don’t, create it with the following content:

pragma solidity >=0.4.21 <0.6.0;

contract Migrations {
  address public owner;
  uint public last_completed_migration;

  constructor() public {
    owner = msg.sender;
  }

  modifier restricted() {
    if (msg.sender == owner) _;
  }

  function setCompleted(uint completed) public restricted {
    last_completed_migration = completed;
  }

  function upgrade(address new_address) public restricted {
    Migrations upgraded = Migrations(new_address);
    upgraded.setCompleted(last_completed_migration);
  }
}

If you now run openzeppelin deploy or any other openzeppelin command that depends on compiling first, it will call truffle compile under the hood before proceeding with the other operations. The SDK will let you know about this:

$ openzeppelin deploy
√ Compiling contracts with Truffle, using settings from truffle.js file
Truffle output:

Compiling your contracts...
===========================
> Compiling .\contracts\Counter.sol
> Artifacts written to ~\repos\openzeppelin-sdk-guide\build\contracts
> Compiled successfully using:
   - solc: 0.5.2+commit.1df8f40c.Emscripten.clang


? Pick a contract to instantiate ...

If you decide to instead recompile with OpenZeppelin, you can force this with openzeppelin compile which always compiles with OZ SDK.

Note that network settings are always read from Truffle’s configuration if present and will fall back to OpenZeppelin’s network.js if not.

Adding OpenZeppelin SDK to a Truffle project

To add OZ SDK to a Truffle project, simply install OpenZeppelin locally or globally and openzeppelin init in the Truffle project’s folder. The networks.js file will not be created as OpenZeppelin will detect that it’s initializing in a Truffle folder. OpenZeppelin’s SDK is careful about overwriting essential files, so it won’t cause any conflicts like those that might occur when adding Truffle into an OZ project.

Migrations

Now that the projects are merged, let’s see how we perform some Migrations - Truffle’s incremental, linked deployments to the blockchain. Migrations are useful when you want to bootstrap a project; like making sure that contracts link to each other properly, ensuring that values are initialized, and so on. By removing human errors and fat fingers from the process of a project’s launch, you make the whole thing much safer.

Our simple Counter contract gets deployed with a value of 0, so let’s write a migration which immediately sends a transaction increasing the value by 10.

OpenZeppelin’s SDK comes with a JavaScript interface which the CLI also uses to execute commands. We can invoke those if we import them in another project or script - like a Truffle migration.

Truffle comes with a default migration which makes subsequent migrations possible. Migrations are executed oredered by prefix - so if the name of a new migration file starts with 2, it will execute after 1_initial_migration.js. Let’s create 2_deploy_counter.js with the content:

const { scripts, ConfigManager } = require('@openzeppelin/cli');
const { add, push, create } = scripts;

async function deploy(options) {
  add({ contractsData: [{ name: 'Counter', alias: 'Counter' }] });
  await push(options);
  await create(Object.assign({ contractAlias: 'Counter' }, options));
}

module.exports = function(deployer, networkName, accounts) {
  deployer.then(async () => {
    const { network, txParams } = await ConfigManager.initNetworkConfiguration({ network: networkName, from: accounts[0] })
    await deploy({ network, txParams })
  })
}

Let’s test it. Run:

truffle migrate --network development
λ npx truffle migrate --network development
Compiling .\contracts\Counter.sol...
Compiling .\contracts\Migrations.sol...
Writing artifacts to .\build\contracts
If you’re using an HDWalletProvider, it must be Web3 1.0 enabled or your migration will hang.
Starting migrations...
======================
> Network name:    'development'
> Network id:      1564927897006
> Block gas limit: 6721975


1_initial_migration.js
======================

   Deploying 'Migrations'
   ----------------------
   > transaction hash:    0x18fd35c7395f6dbc2ad39a6cef6bbb05af41f3c1b24a7abdef7066ff14e9d0b2
   > Blocks: 0            Seconds: 0
   > contract address:    0xe78A0F7E598Cc8b0Bb87894B0F60dD2a88d6a8Ab
   > account:             0x90F8bf6A479f320ead074411a4B0e7944Ea8c9C1
   > balance:             99.99557658
   > gas used:            221171
   > gas price:           20 gwei
   > value sent:          0 ETH
   > total cost:          0.00442342 ETH

   > Saving artifacts
   -------------------------------------
   > Total cost:          0.00442342 ETH


2_deploy_counter.js
===================
0x254dffcd3277C0b1660F6d42EFbB754edaBAbC2B
   -------------------------------------
   > Total cost:                   0 ETH


Summary
=======
> Total deployments:   1
> Final cost:          0.00442342 ETH

It works! Let’s make sure and re-run migrations, it should tell us that we’re up to date.

λ npx truffle migrate

Compiling your contracts...
===========================
> Everything is up to date, there is nothing to compile.

Network up to date.

Our counter is deployed but to make sure let’s check if we can interact with it. We’ll use OZ SDK.

λ openzeppelin call
? Pick a network development
? Pick an instance Counter at 0x254dffcd3277C0b1660F6d42EFbB754edaBAbC2B
? Select which function value()
√ Method 'value()' returned: 0
0

Perfect. Now let’s make the second migration which increases the counter value by 10. Create migrations/3_increment.js.

const Counter = artifacts.require("Counter");

module.exports = async function(deployer) {
    const counter = await Counter.deployed();
    await counter.increase(10);
};

You’ll notice we used Truffle’s default migration process instead of sendTx or call, like we would when interacting with OpenZeppelin’s SDK on the command line. This is because the JavaScript API does not have those helper functions exported for the moment (a pending change), so we have to interact with contracts the old way.

Caveats

Once you start using Truffle in an OpenZeppelin SDK project, it’s recommended you keep using it and don’t mix and match other than in the context of migration scripts where you can use the OpenZeppelin SDK API as much as you wish. The reason is that OpenZeppelin will not respect the migrations deployed by Truffle as it is not aware of them, and will instead deploy its own copy of the contracts you’re creating, possibly causing conflicts.


Now that you know the fusion of Truffle and OpenZeppelin SDK is a possibility, go forth, #buidl and let us know what you created!