Provide metadata for accounts so account fields can be read via anchor

[swaglord8]

In all the Solana examples, view functions require a signer with funds simply to fetch data from an account. This works ok for tests but not when fetching from a browser using phantom as it gets disruptive

I think there should be more examples that show how one can use something like program.account.state.fetch(<account>) to get data from a program which I've seen used in anchor projects

[seanyoung]

Can you give a code example of this please?

I think the state stuff has been removed from anchor, see coral-xyz/anchor#2285 (this is post 0.26.0)

[swaglord8]

@seanyoung
Sure. Here's an example using the flipper.sol example

import { AnchorProvider, Program } from '@project-serum/anchor'
import { useConnection, useWallet } from '@solana/wallet-adapter-react'
import { Keypair, PublicKey, SystemProgram, Transaction } from '@solana/web3.js'
import React, { useMemo } from 'react'
import IDL from '../../contract/build/flipper.json'
import ACCOUNTS from '../../contract/build/accounts.json'

export function Test() {
  const storage = useMemo(() => Keypair.generate(), [])
  const wallet = useWallet()
  const { connection } = useConnection()

  const provider = useMemo(() =>
    new AnchorProvider(connection, wallet!, { preflightCommitment: 'processed' })
  , [connection, wallet])

  const program = useMemo(() =>
    new Program(
      IDL as any,
      new PublicKey(ACCOUNTS.flipper),
      provider,
    )
  , [provider])

  const createAccount = async () => {
    // Create storage
    await provider.sendAndConfirm(
      new Transaction().add(
        SystemProgram.createAccount({
          fromPubkey: wallet.publicKey!,
          newAccountPubkey: storage.publicKey,
          lamports: await provider.connection.getMinimumBalanceForRentExemption(1024),
          space: 1024,
          programId: program.programId,
        }),
      )
      , [storage])
    // Instantiate contract
    await wallet.sendTransaction(
      await program.methods
        .new(true)
        .accounts({ dataAccount: storage.publicKey })
        .transaction()
      , provider.connection)
  }

  const fetchState = async () => {
    // Requires Phantom signature ---->
    const state = await program.methods
      .get()
      .accounts({ dataAccount: storage.publicKey })
      .view()
    console.log(state)
  }

  return (
    <>
      <button onClick={createAccount}>Init</button>
      <button onClick={fetchState}>Fetch state</button>
    </>
  )
}

[seanyoung]

@swaglord8 I am afraid I am not following. Are you talking about:

    // Requires Phantom signature ---->
    const state = await program.methods
      .get()
      .accounts({ dataAccount: storage.publicKey })
      .view()
    console.log(state)

All this requires is the program and the storage.publicKey. I must be missing something, how is the wallet required?

[swaglord8]

@seanyoung Yeah that's the line I'm talking about.

In other anchor react examples I've seen people use
const data = await program.account.<some account name>.fetch(storage.publicKey) to fetch data.

But the IDLs in those examples have contained an array of named accounts next to instructions, and I'm not sure how to replicate that in Solang nor seen any examples that have this

The anchor docs says:

The namespace provides handles to an [[AccountClient]] object for each account in the program.

Usage
program.account.<account-client>
Example
To fetch a Counter account from the above example,

const counter = await program.account.counter.fetch(address);
For the full API, see the [[AccountClient]] reference.

[seanyoung]

@swaglord8 interesting I did not know that, we're also getting used to Anchor so let me see what I can find

[seanyoung]

So the program.accounts.foo.fetch() interface uses metadata which describes the layout of the account, so it can be read directly from the account storage, and no BPF program code is executed (simulated or not).

Currently we do not provide this metadata. This should definitely be fixed; in the mean time, it is possible to use simulated calls to get the values from the contract, like you would on Ethereum - that's the way Solidity works right now.

[LucasSte]

This is the same problem as in #541