Obtaining human readable ABI from Brownie package

Question

I am implementing an app in react-native using ethers.js to interact with blockchain. I needed human readable ABI to create a new instance of a smart contract. But I initially deployed my smart contracts using Brownie python package. Is there a way to get the ABI's from brownie?

Answer 1

brownie compile outputs JSON ABIs in the build directory specified in your brownie-config.yml. However, Ethers.js cannot consume these files because the output JSON includes other content alongside the desired abi. Here's a solution using Ethers.js:

// read and parse the JSON output written by brownie
const jsonAbi = fs.readFileSync('brownie-out/MyContract.json');
const parsed = JSON.parse(jsonAbi.toString());

// create the Ethers.js Interface used for translation,
// and pass only the desired ABI content
const iface = new Interface(parsed.abi);

// perform the translation
const formattedAbi = iface.format(FormatTypes.full).toString();
const translatedAbi = JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(formattedAbi));

// write the translated ABI to disk
fs.writeFileSync(
    path.join(process.cwd(), 'abis/', 'MyContract.abi'),
    translatedAbi
);

Here's some relevant documentation: https://docs.ethers.org/v5/api/utils/abi/formats/#abi-formats--converting-between-formats