Best practices for importing contracts (Github vs. Including in project)?

Question

On the remix docs, it gives examples of importing contracts from source either locally or from github.

I'm wondering for importing standard contracts (like say, OpenZeppelin's ERC20 StandardToken) would it be considered more modular to npm install the whole openzeppelin library so you can import their contract locally, or pull directly from github using the entire Github URL?

I'm guessing it doesn't make a difference on gas, but it seems to me like pulling from Github is a more "immutable" way of doing it. For that matter, though, since Openzeppelin is already deployed on-chain (likely tons of times actually), is there a standard way to just reference functions from a contract that's already deployed on the blockchain?

Answer 1

1. There is no real difference in how you import the contract.

2. Yes, you can create an instance of a contract that is already deployed. You need to have the code of the contract or the interface to it.

Just in case that you actually need t interact with a contract already deployed, this is how to do it:

Basically the interface is a list of the functions without the actual implementation. For instance:

contract Mycontract{
    function myfunction_1(uint param, address myaddress) public;
    function myfunction_2() public;
    function myfunction_3() public;
}

Is an interface to Mycontract, notice that the functions are not implemented. Once you have this you just need to create an instance to that contract. For that you need the address at which the contract is deployed:

Mycontract instanceMycontract = Mycontract('mycontractAddress');

Once you have the instance, you can do, for instance:

instanceMycontract.myfunction_1(param, myaddress)

Hope this help.