Arrayify error, when passing a string as an argument to a transaction

Question

I have been having this problem with the web3 library for a while now and I am not sure how to solve.

I am encoding a transaction within a react app. So far, all contract interactions inside the app with the same contract are going smoothly, this problem seems to have arisen when I am using a string as a method argument.

Here is the method I am calling in my contract:

function sendShardToShardOwner(address _shardOwner, string memory _shardURI) public onlyOwner
    {
        require(shardHolders[_shardOwner], "Not a valid Trustee");
        nftContract.distributeShard(_shardOwner, _shardURI);
    }

The contract takes two parameters as arguments, an address and an IPFS URL as a string. When calling the below method to encode the ABI, I receive the offending arrayify error.

const recoveryContract = new this.web3.eth.Contract(RecoveryContract.abi, this.recoveryContractAddress);
const data = recoveryContract.methods.sendShardToShardOwner(address, "QmbSo373odJ8HosMNYgsFGw5bfkKrG5GhkZwJX9KYNL4zu").encodeABI()

Log:

Error: invalid arrayify value (argument="value", value="516d62536f3337336f644a38486f734d4e5967734647773562666b4b72473547686b5a774a58394b594e4c347a75", code=INVALID_ARGUMENT, version=bytes/5.0.11)
    at Logger.makeError (index.ts:205)
    at Logger.throwError (index.ts:217)
    at Logger.throwArgumentError (index.ts:221)
    at arrayify (index.ts:136)
    at toUtf8Bytes (utf8.ts:242)
    at StringCoder.encode (string.ts:15)
    at array.ts:62
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at pack (array.ts:54)
    at TupleCoder.encode (tuple.ts:23)
    at AbiCoder.encode (abi-coder.ts:106)
    at ABICoder.push../node_modules/web3-eth/node_modules/web3-eth-abi/lib/index.js.ABICoder.encodeParameters (index.js:121)
    at index.js:439
    at Array.map (<anonymous>)
    at Object._encodeMethodABI (index.js:438)
    at RecoveryContractManager.recoverPublicKeyFromUser (RecoveryContractManager.js:387)

Upon investigation, the value "516d6...a75" is the hex representation of the string I have passed as a parameter. From looking at the call stack, the error is being thrown within a web3 dependency "@ethersproject/bytes". I tried to reproduce the error in an isolated environment by encoding the transaction with identical parameters and I have had no luck reproducing it.

I am posting to see if anyone has had a similar error and if anybody has been able to fix it. So far I've tried the classics: isolating the error, downgrading my web3 a few times, redeploying my contracts, reinstalling node modules, all with no luck.

Answer 1

Convert string to byte32:

   function web3StringToBytes32(text) {
        var result = ethers.utils.hexlify(ethers.utils.toUtf8Bytes(text));
        while (result.length < 66) { result += '0'; }
        if (result.length !== 66) { throw new Error("invalid web3 implicit bytes32"); }
        return result;
    }