bytes32 Error: incorrect data length - ethers.js

Question

I'm trying to write a script that mimics a contract value read flow that works on Etherscan

I have a bytes32 value 0x.......... of character length 48. On etherscan I can just paste this value into the box and read a return value from a function.

However, when passing it into an ethers contract instance like contract.function(bytes32Value), I'm getting this error in my script: incorrect data length

Not sure whether etherscan is doing something behind the scenes to clean up the data type, but not clear to me how to run this

Answer 1

A bytes32 hex string should have 2+64=66 char length. It is possible that some tools can pad zero bytes around a value if it is smaller than the required length, for easy use.

// pads 00s from left until the hex string is bytes32
const padded = ethers.utils.hexZeroPad(shortHexString, 32)

Ethers library always wants the dev to be explicit with what they're doing, i.e. doesn't guess stuff if there can be multiple possibilities. Imagine someone unintentionally passed an address to a field that expects bytes32 (maybe incorrect ordering of params to a function that takes address and bytes32), it might cost them some time debugging where it went wrong.