Making a contract in the geth console

Question

I have the following code in a script name contract.js ( foo, pwd and id are replaced by their value in my actual script)

var web3=require('web3');
personal.unlockAccount('id', "pwd")
var aContract = web3.eth.contract([]);
var a = aContract.new(
{
    from: web3.eth.accounts[1], 
    data: 'foo',
    gas: 3000000
}, function (e, contract){
    console.log(e, contract);
    if (typeof contract.address !== 'undefined') {
        console.log('Contract mined! address: ' + contract.address + ' transactionHash: ' + contract.transactionHash);
    }
})

I wanted to execute this code in the geth console so I typed

loadScript("/usr/username/contract.js")

But all I have is the following error:

err: TypeError: Cannot access member 'contract' of undefined false

I know that I didn't define an ABI but when I type the code above directly in the geth console it just works and then I can mine this contract (in local).

So is it really possible to obtain the same result with loadscript ?

Answer 1

Your problem is most likely that you redefine web3.

web3 exists in the geth console out of the box, already connected to the node. Unless you need a specific version other than the one geth is using, there's no need to add it manually. In this situation, it is probably breaking because require('web3') returns a factory for web3 objects, not web3 itself.

In short, try it without requiring web3.