Contract call does not works through web3

Question

I have contract method transferFrom that failed when I calling it the site's from backend, but in the same time it works from Remix.

Both calls are performed through Metamask. Initially I thought that it could be related to gas amount but when I called method from Remix and specified gas amount that was used for failed transaction - it works, so I have no idea what is the problem.

Here is failed transaction that called using this code:

Eth.contract._approve(toAddress, fromAddress, amount)
.then(async result => {
  const tx = await Eth.contract.transferFrom.sendTransaction(fromAddress, toAddress, amount);

  return res.json({success: true, data: {from: fromAddress, to: toAddress, amount: amount, tx: tx}});
})
.catch(error => {
  return res.boom.badImplementation('Unable to approve transfer ' + amount + ' tokens to the address ' + fromAddress, {success: false});
});

_approve is special function in the contract that accessible only for contract owner and has 3 parameters insteand of 2 required by ERC20 interface.

And here is working transaction that is called from Remix with the same contract loaded.

Answer 1

Finally I got it. Issue is unrelated to the contract code except couple of require statements inside it.

Methods transferFrom relies on internal approved member that contains alloed amount to transfer between 2 accounts. It was done to merge duplicated functionality of methods transfer and transferFrom (see ERC20 Token interface). But it was mistake.

On the site's backend called consequently 2 methods using await:

• approve
• transferFrom

But when approve was already awaited and response received it wasn't actually mined by the network and approved mapping does not contains required amount. Thus statement require(approved[_from][_to] >= _amount) failed.

Solution: do not merge logically unmergeble.

Answer 2

Using transferFrom involves three accounts:

• owner: Account who has the tokens
• recipient: Account that will receive tokens
• sender: Account making the transaction

Now the sequence should be

1. the owner has to approve the sender

   token.approve(sender, amount, { from: owner });
   

2. The sender can make the transfer

   token.transferFrom(owner, recipient, amount, { from: sender });