.transfer fails

Question

Trying to call .transfer() within a function makes it fail. I am aware that the difference between .send() and .transfer() is that .send dont throw. The function works properly when using .send(), but fails when using .transfer. I simiplified the transfer-call to narrow down the fault-possibilities. Here is my code:

contract AuctionHouse is ItemOwnership {
constructor () public payable {}
function () external payable {}


function purchaseAuction(uint _id, address _buyer) external payable {

    Auction memory auction = auctions[auctionIndexes[_id]];
    require(
        msg.sender == _buyer ||
        approvedForAll[_buyer][msg.sender], 
        "You must have authority over purchasing account");
    require(isOnAuction(_id), "That item is not on auction");
    require(auction.startTime + auction.expiration > now, "auction is expired");
    require(_buyer != ownerOfItem[_id], "Can't purchase your own item");

    //remove item from auctionhouse and transfer ownership
    removeAuction(_id, _buyer);

    //This solution of transferring an auction prevents re-entrancy attacks by 
    //transferring the item and taking it off the auction house before transferring the currency.
    //Converts from Wei to Finney
    msg.sender.transfer(1); // <------------------------------

    //send out event
    emit AuctionPurchased(_id, auction.price, auction.seller, _buyer);
}

edit: Made an extra test just to see if it worked. The following test also fails:

    function test() public payable {
       msg.sender.transfer(500);
    }

Answer 1

Since your contract does:

msg.sender.transfer(1);

It would be good form to first:

require(address(this).balance >=1, "Contract underfunded");

It's possible your sends were failing due to insufficient funds and the contract was ignoring the fail case and just carrying on - precisely what transfer is meant to address.

It's also possible something is going wrong at this stage. I would be eager to comment it out for testing.

removeAuction(_id, _buyer);

Hope it helps.