An analogy of Contract#connect method from ethers

[bogdan]

I found it hard to have a code like this in tests when testing a multirole permission models on contracts:

    const contract = await viem.getContractAt(
      "MinterRoleMock",
      minterRole.address,
      { client: { wallet: minter } }
    );

I tried to abstract it like:

const getContractAt = async <T extends string>(
  name: ContractName<T>,
  contract: {address: Address} | Address,
  wallet: WalletClient
) => {
  const address = typeof contract === 'string' ? contract : contract.address;
  return await viem.getContractAt<T>(
    name,
    address,
    { client: { wallet: wallet } }
  );
}

const contract = await getContractAt("MinterRoleMock", minterRole, minter)

But because of typescript magic envolved, didn't find any way to make it work.

Any advice on making the operation of attaching a contract to different wallet making one elegant line of code?

Ideal api I think would be like this:

const connect = async <T extends GetContractReturnType>(
  contract: T,
  wallet: WalletClient,
): Promise<T> => {

}

[kanej]

@schaable is the issue here that the WalletClient type is being imported from viem directly and building the abstracting function requires types from hardhat-viem?

[schaable]

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to write a wrapper on the user side. You’d need to add a new method to the plugin for the types to work. That said, I don’t believe

await getContractAt("MinterRoleMock", minterRole, minter) 

is significantly different from

await getContractAt("MinterRoleMock", minterRole, { client: { wallet: minter }})

As for the suggested interface, Viem doesn’t allow switching the client (public or wallet) of a contract; you need to retrieve the contract again. Because of that, connect(contract, wallet) would have to call viem.getContract again, passing the contract.abi and contract.address. And figuring out how to return the correct type without knowing the contract name might be tricky to implement.

[bogdan]

The Contract doesn't store its name. If it would things could get much easier:

const connectWallet = <T extends {address: string, name: string}>(contract: T, wallet: WalletClient): Promise<T> => {
  return await view.getContractAt(contract.name, contract.address, {client: {wallet}}) as T;
}

Can you add name to Contract?

[schaable]

When we implemented the plugin, we decided against injecting custom properties into viem objects to avoid confusing people. Objects could have different properties depending on whether they come from viem or hardhat-viem, and I still believe that’s a valid concern. That said, we may revisit this in the future if more people are interested in seeing this feature implemented.

[bogdan]

All of that is too smart to be effective 😢 .