Do smart contracts have a API?

Question

I am taking a look at Solidity, because the concept of smart contracts is starting to interest me.

I see how Solidity can be used to code smart contracts. But the language does for example not contain a library to code a user interface.

So that means that Solidity gets it data from an external source?

Let's examine the Open Auction example from the docs.

/// Bid on the auction with the value sent
    /// together with this transaction.
    /// The value will only be refunded if the
    /// auction is not won.
    function bid() external payable {
        // No arguments are necessary, all
        // information is already part of
        // the transaction. The keyword payable
        // is required for the function to
        // be able to receive Ether.

        // Revert the call if the bidding
        // period is over.
        if (block.timestamp > auctionEndTime)
            revert AuctionAlreadyEnded();

        // If the bid is not higher, send the
        // money back (the revert statement
        // will revert all changes in this
        // function execution including
        // it having received the money).
        if (msg.value <= highestBid)
            revert BidNotHighEnough(highestBid);

        if (highestBid != 0) {
            // Sending back the money by simply using
            // highestBidder.send(highestBid) is a security risk
            // because it could execute an untrusted contract.
            // It is always safer to let the recipients
            // withdraw their money themselves.
            pendingReturns[highestBidder] += highestBid;
        }
        highestBidder = msg.sender;
        highestBid = msg.value;
        emit HighestBidIncreased(msg.sender, msg.value);
    }

This function allows the user to do a bid on the auction. But nowhere asks the user to enter the value he wants to bid using a user-input. I only see msg.value. A quick Google search tells me that msg is a global variable which lets me access the request send to the smart contract and msg.value is the content of that request.

My question is: How does one send a message to the smart contract? If I'd deploy the Open Auction smart contract on Ethereum, could I use HTTP-requests to send a message to the contract?

If I had the following HTML interface:

<form>
    <label>Value you want to bid:</label>
    <input type="number" name="value_to_bid" value="">

    <input type="submit" name="submit_bid" value="bid">
</form>

which is simply a user input asking the user for the value he wants to bid on the auction. How would I send the entered value to a Ethereum smart contract (in theory, not asking for code)?

TL;DR: I don't understand how the theory behind how one would communicate with a smart contract.

Answer 1

Welcome to the space. Solidity does not have any way to interact with it directly rather you interact with it using ABI (application binary interface) which you get when you compile your solidity contract into bytecode (which is deployed to the blockchain). The easiest way to interact with your contract is to use libraries such as Ethersjs and web3js.

The best place to start interacting with your contract is to first use the remix IDE before using these other tools.

Answer 2

There are a few different frameworks for connecting with a smart contract. One of which (the one that I use) is hardhat/ethers.

It allows you to quite easily connect or deploy smart contracts and refer back to them.

To connect to an already deployed contract:

Auction = await ethers.getContractFactory("Auction");
auction = await Auction.attach(<insert contract address here as a string>);

Now, using "auction", you can check on any public value or access any external/public function on that contract!

This is my first reply to someone else's question, so hope this helps :)