How generate number type uint256 in Go

Question

My smart contract has a function like this

function setTest(uint256 test) returns (bool){
    testNumber = test;
    return true;
}

I used these piece of code Go to create a transaction to set new value to testNumber - a RPC call

var newtest uint256 = 100 // I expected this type (uint256)
abis, err := abi.JSON(strings.NewReader(contractInterface))
output, err := abis.Pack("setTest", newtest)

params := make(map[string]string)
params["data"] = fmt.Sprintf("0x%s", common.Bytes2Hex(output))
params["from"] = self.ownerAccount
params["to"] = self.contractAccount

done := ""
err = self.client.Call(&done, "eth_sendTransaction", params)
.....

And the problem is I can't set newtest as type uint256. I can't find type uint256 in Go. Please help me, generate number type uint256 or convert from (big.Int, int64, uint64) to uint256. Thank you

Answer 1

One of the Golang gurus might want to comment further, but I don't think Go supports 256-bit integers natively.

You could import Geth's number package, together with math/big, and use the relevant parts.

e.g. Call Uint256():

// Return a Number with a UNSIGNED limiter up to 256 bits
func Uint256(n int64) *Number {
    return &Number{big.NewInt(n), limitUnsigned256}
}

Which returns a pointer to a structure that can pretend to represent a number that large:

// A Number represents a generic integer with a bounding function limiter. Limit is called after each operations
// to give "fake" bounded integers. New types of Number can be created through NewInitialiser returning a lambda
// with the new Initialiser.
type Number struct {
    num   *big.Int
    limit func(n *Number) *Number
}

You might want to consider why you're using a 256-bit type in first place, as the above seems a bit of a kludge.

Answer 2

Not sure since when exactly, but, as of October 2018, Richard's answer is outdated. You can generate a uint256 by importing the github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/accounts/abi package and then doing:

var number []byte
number = abi.U256(big.NewInt(3))

Testing it:

fmt.Printf("value: %d\n", number)
fmt.Printf("number of bytes: %d", len(number))

Output is:

value: [0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3]

number of bytes: 32