How to extract the ABI part from JSON file created in artifacts and create a separate file for it?

Question

I have been using the Hardhat environment for a while now, and every time I have to provide the ABI to the front-end team, I need to copy-paste the ABI manually from the JSON file, since it contains other useless values which they don't need.

{
  "_format": "hh-sol-artifact-1",
  "contractName": "Test",
  "sourceName": "contracts/Test.sol",
  "abi": [...]
}

So, my question is if there is a script that I can use that extracts the ABI part automatically, and create separate files for these just ABIs? Not sure if the question is relevant, but just wanted to try something that can make our lives easier. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I created a code to extract the ABIs from the artifacts and copy them into a new folder. Let me know if there is a simpler solution:

const extractAbi = async () => {
  const mainFolder = "artifacts/contracts/";
  fs.readdirSync(mainFolder).forEach((folder) => {
    if (folder.includes(".sol")) {
      const absolutePath = mainFolder + folder + "/";

      fs.readdirSync(absolutePath).forEach((file: any) => {
        if (!file.includes(".dbg.json")) {
          const finalPath = absolutePath + file;
          const parentDirectory = __dirname.substr(
            0,
            __dirname.lastIndexOf("/")
          );
          const abiFolder = parentDirectory + "/abis";

          try {
            if (!fs.existsSync(abiFolder)) {
              fs.mkdirSync(abiFolder);
            }
          } catch (err) {
            console.error(err);
          }

          let data: any = fs.readFileSync(finalPath);

          fs.writeFileSync(
            `abis/${file}`,
            JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(data).abi)
          );
        }
      });
    }
  });
};

Answer 2

A great package to use is hardhat-deploy, which creates deployment objects for each deployed contract. These objects contain the abi and the address of any deployed contract and you can export them to json.