Can someone explain the difference between using metamask or web3 to send ether from truffle accounts?

Question

I am using web3 and truffle (i am a newbie wants to understand concept) I need to transfer ether so i understand that i need to use web3.eth.sendtransaction But will it work as i am using localhost and ethereum bridge to connect with oraclize? Or is it possible to use metamask to facilitate transaction between accounts ? Accounts are being fetched from truffle

In short i need to transfer ether between accounts fetched from truffle

Answer 1

Let's clarify some concepts first:

• A (client) node is used to connect to the blockchain. A node is the only possible way to communicate with the blockchain.
• You can either run your own node (quite much effort) or use a ready node service provider which offers you access to their nodes (such as Infura).
• Metamask is a browser extension which facilitates sending transactions. It utilizes Infura to send the transactions to the blockchain
• web3 is a library to facilicate handling Ethereum transactions. You can send direct transactions with it as long as you have access to a node. It includes functionality to maintain accounts.
• Truffle is a testing and deployment software. It utilizes web3 and adds on top of it.
• Oraclize is a third-party service which only provides extra data to the blockchain upon request. It's not really relevant here as it doesn't provide accounts or access to blockchain.

So what you need is at least an account (which has Ethers), some way of communicating with a node and access to a node. For websites the typical way is to use web3js (JavaScript implementation of web3) and MetaMask.