Contract methods calls return empty array

Question

I'm quite stuck with this issue. It seems like it must work, but it doesn't :D

Have a contract on rinkeby network which is working perfectly through remix(load by address) and truffle console. However method calls through web3 client refuse to work.

init:

import Web3 from 'web3';


// @ts-ignore
const web3 = new Web3(window.web3.currentProvider);

***got address & abi***

export default new web3.eth.Contract(abi, address);

usage example:

console.log(registryContract.options.address);
console.log(registryContract.methods);
const owner = await registryContract.methods.owner().call();

In console.log() i can see the actual contract address and methods. Metamask is active and web3.eth.defaultAccount shows me my correct account at rinkeby network => provider must be working.

calling the owner from remix working. with web3 i'm getting an empty array as response. Same for other methods calls.

What is possible going wrong? "web3": "^1.0.0-beta.37"

Answer 1

The problem was with contract abi - don't know what exactly was wrong with it. I simply used abi from different source and it helped. Any tool for abi verification?

Answer 2

I had exactly the same issue and managed to solve it by passing correct ABI object. Looks like earlier versions of solc returned ABI as a JSON string and current version returns actual JavaScript object (but I'm not sure). So you can't just print contract's ABI and paste it to web3 instance (as I did). I had to JSON.stringify returned object first and then JSON.parse copy/pasted string to the web3 instance.

Answer 3

You have some stray brackets after the method name.

Instead of

registryContract.methods.owner().call();

try

registryContract.methods.owner.call();

Answer 4

Try this.

registryContract.owner(function (error, result) {
if (!error)
  console.log(result);
else
  console.error(error);
});

Answer 5

Encountered exactly the same problem (all methods returning empty arrays) and was driving me mad.

The solution (the one I found anyway) was to stringify the abi resulting from the solc compiler (as mentioned earlier in this thread).

console.log(JSON.stringify(abi)); // AND NOT console.log(abi)

And to copy&paste the resulting string copy&pasted to specify the deployed contract's abi.

And pending question, any way to check that a the proxy obtained on a deployed contract using its address and associated abi is correct ?

That would have saved me a lot of time and would probably save time for many more to come.

Answer 6

The issue lies with the ABI you are feeding to web3.eth.Contract and you need a comprehensive one. Go to https://remix.ethereum.org/ and compile your contract there, then copy the ABI from there.

You can find the copy button for the ABI at the bottom of this image.