Deploying the smart contract using Web3.js gives error?

Question

I'm deploying a smart contract using the following guide but getting a strange error -

Guide: https://tokenmarket.net/blog/creating-ethereum-smart-contract-transactions-in-client-side-javascript/

let fs = require("fs");
let Web3 = require('web3');
let web3 = new Web3();
web3.setProvider(new web3.providers.HttpProvider('http://localhost:8545'));

let source = fs.readFileSync("LMS.json");
let contracts = JSON.parse(source)["contracts"];
let abi = JSON.parse(contracts["LMS.sol:LMS"]["abi"]);
let code = contracts['LMS.sol:LMS'].bin
let LMS = web3.eth.contract(abi);

var lms = LMS.new("sanchit", "[email protected]", {
   from:web3.eth.coinbase,
   data:code,
   gas:600000}, function(err, myContract){
    console.log(err);
    if(!err) {
       if(!myContract.address) {
           console.log(myContract.transactionHash)
       } else {
           console.log(myContract.address) // the contract address
       }
    }
  });

This gives me following error -

Error: invalid argument 0: missing 0x prefix for hex data
at Object.InvalidResponse (/home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/web3/lib/web3/errors.js:35:16)
at /home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/web3/lib/web3/requestmanager.js:86:36
at XMLHttpRequest.request.onreadystatechange (/home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/web3/lib/web3/httpprovider.js:118:13)
at XMLHttpRequestEventTarget.dispatchEvent (/home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/xhr2/lib/xhr2.js:64:18)
at XMLHttpRequest._setReadyState (/home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/xhr2/lib/xhr2.js:354:12)
at XMLHttpRequest._onHttpResponseEnd (/home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/xhr2/lib/xhr2.js:509:12)
at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/sanchitb/blockchain-workshop/lms/node_modules/xhr2/lib/xhr2.js:469:24)
at emitNone (events.js:91:20)
at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:188:7)
at endReadableNT (_stream_readable.js:975:12)

Can someone advise what wrong I'm doing here?

Note: The default account is unlocked and console.log(abi) shows abi definitions.

Answer 1

Adding '0x' as a prefix to bytecode fixes the issue, below is the code which works perfectly fine -

let fs = require("fs");
let Web3 = require('web3');
let web3 = new Web3();
web3.setProvider(new web3.providers.HttpProvider('http://localhost:8545'));

let source = fs.readFileSync("LMS.json");
let contracts = JSON.parse(source)["contracts"];

let abi = JSON.parse(contracts["LMS.sol:LMS"]["abi"]);
let code = '0x'+contracts['LMS.sol:LMS'].bin
let gasEstimate = web3.eth.estimateGas({data: code});
let LMS = web3.eth.contract(abi);

var lms = LMS.new("sanchit", "[email protected]", {
   from:web3.eth.coinbase,
   data:code,
   gas: gasEstimate
 }, function(err, myContract){
    if(!err) {
       if(!myContract.address) {
           console.log(myContract.transactionHash) 
       } else {
           console.log(myContract.address) 
       }
    }
  });