How to use infura with web3 to talk to remote ropsten node?

Question

I understand we need mnemonic as we did use it in deploying contract with truffle so as to be able to send ether from our ropsten account private keys. I could not find a way use the same in my server.js file to call contract functions. I want to build a webapp which neither uses local node nor metamask and all the transactions are carried by my account. I am sharing my code which i derived from various sources but don't know why is it not executing:

const express = require('express');
const Web3 = require('web3');
const fs = require('fs');

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

console.log('server side code running');
app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('Listening on port 3000');
});

if (typeof web3 !== 'undefined') {
    web3 = new Web3(web3.currentProvider);
}
else {
    web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("https://ropsten.infura.io/v3/<api key>"));
}

var contractabi = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('abi.json', 'utf8'));
var contractaddress = '0xb51adbdd256930bd6b4c613add6fcca31db49827';
var contract = new web3.eth.Contract(contractabi,contractaddress);

const privateKey = 'my private key';
const account = web3.eth.accounts.privateKeyToAccount('0x' + privateKey);
web3.eth.accounts.wallet.add(account);
web3.eth.defaultAccount = account.address;
contract.methods.set(7)
    .send({
        from: web3.eth.defaultAccount,
        gas: 2000000,
        gasPrice: 4000000000
    })

Error I'm facing: UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Invalid JSON RPC response: "" I think it returns a promise which i'm not able to use. I need help! and if there are alternate ways to do the same, i'm excited to know

Answer 1

You don't need web3 condition, because nobody can inject web3 to your nodejs app.

const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("https://ropsten.infura.io/TOKEN"));

It looks like url is not correct, based on the error, make sure that you use correct url.