Why is "Methods" Always Empty When Building Solidity Smart Contract With Truffle?

Question

When I the ABI for any smart contract it always creates "methods" as just an empty object... it should contain my public and external functions, but it doesn't.

When I look at the ABI I don't see any functions at all... even when I instantiate a contract with web3, the "methods" is just an empty object. why is this happening?

---

Steps to Reproduce

1. run truffle init
2. run truffle create all Hello
3. add a function to Hello contract:

function foooo() external pure returns (string memory) {
    return "something";
  }

4. run truffle build
5. Look at build/contracts/Hello.json and see that "methods" is just an empty object...

Answer 1

Those fields are related to documentation.

For example the following dummy function :

/**
 * @dev This is a dev comment
 * @notice This is a user comment
 */
function documentedFunction() public pure returns (bool success) {
    return true;
}

When compiled, will produce the following in the artifact json output :

  "devdoc": {
    "kind": "dev",
    "methods": {
      "documentedFunction()": {
        "details": "This is a dev comment"
      }
    },
    "version": 1
  },
  "userdoc": {
    "kind": "user",
    "methods": {
      "documentedFunction()": {
        "notice": "This is a user comment"
      }
    },
    "version": 1
  }

See this link that explains it very well already.