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is there a way with web3.js to get a contract abi json, knowing only the contract address?
I cannot find anymore a link in wich they explain how to do this, in this post the guy replied telling that there is a way to do this but it's not so well documented.
How can I do this?
a) you know the source code of smart-contract
programmatically: see the link to gist from Ivan's answer
manually: with Remix
b) you don't know the source code but smart-contract was verified in one of the explorers
Then, use block explorer search to get ABI of smart-contract. For example, you can read the verified source code of smart-contracts in BlockScout, Etherscan, Etherchain
c) you don't know the source code && contract is not verified
You can use Panoramix smart-contracts decompiler to get a partial ABI of smart-contract
To add to o0ragman0o's comment, see this doc:
https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/v0.5.2/metadata.html
It outlines how contract metadata should be published to Swarm to avoid centralized (i.e. Etherscan) management/access to contract metadata (including ABI).
I have the same question before. For now is not possible, only you can do it with solc compile. Here is an example : https://gist.github.com/tomconte/4edb83cf505f1e7faf172b9252fff9bf
you can always solc then call the abi from a file or directly. source : Solcjs
