How can I split my Contract up into different smaller ones?

Question

I am learning the Solidity language and I have been experimenting on the Ropsten Testnet, I have tried several things with a contract I created, yet everytime I try to create it, remix solidity IDE gives me the error transaction cost exceeds gas limit.

I got many recommendations which tell me to split the contract up into smaller ones, Im new to the Ethereum token world and dont know what people mean by this? If I split my contract up into several parts and create each one equal? How will I link theese together?

Answer 1

You have to do something like this:

• Token.sol

  // This should be an abstract interface without implementation
  contract Token {
    function mint(address _to, uint _amount) public returns (bool);
  
    // Rest of the code
  }
  

• CrowdsaleToken.sol

  import "Token.sol";
  
  // This contract contains the implementation of ERC20 methods
  contract CrowdsaleToken is Token {
  
    function mint(address _to, uint _amount) public returns (bool) {
        balances[_to] = balances[_to] + _amount;
        return true;
    }
  
    // Rest of the code
  }
  

• Crowdsale.sol

  import "Token.sol";
  
  // The Crowdsale  interact with CrowdsaleToke through the
  // abstract interface Token
  contact Crowdsale {
      Token crowdsaleToken; // Address of the CrowdsaleToken
  
      function Crowdsale(address _crowdsaleToken) {
          // We receive the CrowdsaleToken addres as constructor param
          crowdsaleToken = Token(_crowdsaleToken);
  
          // We can use the CrowdsaleToken contract
          crowdsaleToken.mint(msg.sender, 0x31415926535);
      }
  
      // Other crowdsale methods
  }
  

The deployment is done in two steps

1. Deploy CrowdsaleToken, await for the contract address
2. Deploy Crowdsale and pass the CrowdsaleToken address as parameter

That is the basic idea.

Some frameworks like Truffle and Populus can be used to automate some of this tasks.