Trying to initialize accounts as global variable before starting Node console

Question

Basically, I am trying to run a script that initializes all the variables I'll need during my Node console session. The script looks like this:

global.Web3 = require('web3');
global.web3 = new Web3(new 
Web3.providers.HttpProvider('http://localhost:8545'));

global.Tx = require('ethereumjs-tx');

global.solc = require('solc');

global.accounts;
web3.eth.getAccounts().then(_accounts => {
    accounts = _accounts;
});
require('repl').start({});

So far, everything works fine, until time to set the accounts variable. Running the script and calling it produces the following:

➜  ethtest node init.js
> accounts
ReferenceError: accounts is not defined
    at repl:1:1
    at ContextifyScript.Script.runInContext (vm.js:35:29)
    at REPLServer.defaultEval (repl.js:342:29)
    at bound (domain.js:280:14)
    at REPLServer.runBound [as eval] (domain.js:293:12)
    at REPLServer.<anonymous> (repl.js:539:10)
    at emitOne (events.js:96:13)
    at REPLServer.emit (events.js:188:7)
    at REPLServer.Interface._onLine (readline.js:232:10)
    at REPLServer.Interface._line (readline.js:583:8)

I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding something simple, but so far, I've been unable to figure it out. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You have a race condition where require('repl').start({}); runs before accounts = _accounts; runs. This is because web3.eth.getAccounts() runs asynchronously. What you should have instead is

web3.eth.getAccounts().then(_accounts => { accounts = _accounts; require('repl').start({}); });