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When I try to declare a web3 object It's always undefined.

I'm writting in JavaScript and using Infura as my provider for the ETH mainnet. I also tried with a local blockchain instead of Infura, but it also didn't work. I'm new to blockchain development and I'm kinda stuck on this. I know it must be something very small I'm missing, maybe I forgot to install something. I've also spent quite some time researching my problem, but I just can't seem to get it to work.

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

        <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js" integrity="sha256-FgpCb/KJQlLNfOu91ta32o/NMZxltwRo8QtmkMRdAu8=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ethereum/web3.js/master/dist/web3.min.js"></script>
    </head>
    <script>
        const rpcURL = "https://rinkeby.infura.io/INFURA_PROJECT_ID";
        const address = 'MY_WALLET_ADDRESS';

        const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider(rpcURL));

        web3.eth.getBalance(address, (err, wei) => {
            myBalance = web3.utils.fromWei(wei, 'ether')
            console.log(myBalance)
        })
    </script>
</html>
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  • Could you please post the errors you get in console? – DamiToma Jun 15 '19 at 12:51
  • web3 is undefined – RazerBoy Jun 29 '19 at 21:28
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I can see two problems here. First, you can't directly include raw files hosted on GitHub because of their CORB policies, but there's a workaround for this, just follow this steps. What you'll get in the end is this URL: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/ethereum/web3.js/dist/web3.min.js

Then, it's better to wait for the document to be fully loaded, because it might be that script will execute before Web3 is actually included.
You can use window.onload with pure Javascript, $(document).ready() with jQuery.

So the final script ends up being:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
        <meta name="description" content="">

        <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js" integrity="sha256-FgpCb/KJQlLNfOu91ta32o/NMZxltwRo8QtmkMRdAu8=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/ethereum/web3.js/dist/web3.min.js"></script>
    </head>
    <script>
        $(document).ready(function() {
            const rpcURL = "https://rinkeby.infura.io/INFURA_PROJECT_ID";
            const address = 'MY_WALLET_ADDRESS';

            const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider(rpcURL));

            web3.eth.getBalance(address, (err, wei) => {
                myBalance = web3.utils.fromWei(wei, 'ether')
                console.log(myBalance)
            })
        });
    </script>
</html>

Works fine.

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0

Thank you for your answer. This did indeed fix my problem with the web3 object being undefined and I marked you answer as correct. But I would still like to point one thing out.

The line myBalance = web3.utils.fromWei(wei, 'ether') will throw an error telling you that web3.utils is not imported. You can look at the below code for the fix.

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

        <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js" integrity="sha256-FgpCb/KJQlLNfOu91ta32o/NMZxltwRo8QtmkMRdAu8=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/ethereum/web3.js/dist/web3.min.js"></script>
    </head>

    <script>
        $(document).ready(function() {
            const rpcURL = "https://rinkeby.infura.io/MY_INFURA_PROJECT_ID";
            const address = 'MY_WALLET_ADDRESS';

            const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider(rpcURL));

            web3.eth.getBalance(address, (err, wei) => {
                var balanceA = wei;
                balanceB = web3.toDecimal(balanceA);
                var balanceC = web3.fromWei(balanceB, 'ether');

                console.log("ding");

                console.log(balanceA);
                console.log(balanceB);
                console.log(balanceC);

                console.log("dong");
            })
        });
    </script>
</html>
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  • That's because you're using web3.fromWei while the correct method is web3.utils.fromWei. Try this out and let me know whether it works. – DamiToma Jun 27 '19 at 23:13
  • I think you misunderstand. The above code does work. web3.utils.fromWei() doesn't work whereas web3.fromWei() does work. The problem is fixed now :), thank you again for you help. – RazerBoy Jun 29 '19 at 21:27
  • That's because this CDN hosts version 0.20.6, I thought it was the latest. My bad. – DamiToma Jun 30 '19 at 9:01

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