How to interact with Smart Contract deployed on Blockchain from Swift app

Question

It is my first time working with smart contracts and my goal is to create a mobile app which can interact with it by calling methods to save or retrieve data. For this reason I have created a very simple contract using Remix and I have also deployed on Rinkeby testnet.

contract Storage {

uint256 number;

function store(uint256 num) public {
    number = num;
}

function retrieve() public view returns (uint256){
    return number;
}
}

Then I built a SwiftUI app, which has one button. When I press this button, I want to call the store method and save some int number. For example number 9. Therefore I have created a function called write which looks as following:

 let myInt = 9

  func write() {

    let web3 = Web3.InfuraRinkebyWeb3(accessToken: "https://rinkeby.infura.io/v3/a146daf63d93490995823f0910f50118")

    let walletAddress = EthereumAddress("0xc65943Fae5a554e7DCF916F8828a73E5f7b1bDCd")! // Your wallet address
    let contractMethod = "store" // Contract method you want to write
    let contractABI = contractABIString // Contract ABI
    let contractAddress = EthereumAddress("0x2826C42354FE5B816c7E21AD9e3B395Ced512C0C")!
    let abiVersion = 2 // Contract ABI version
    let parameters = [myInt] as [AnyObject]
    let extraData: Data = Data() // Extra data for contract method
    let contract = web3.contract(contractABI, at: contractAddress, abiVersion: abiVersion)!
    var options = TransactionOptions.defaultOptions
    options.from = walletAddress
    options.gasPrice = .automatic
    options.gasLimit = .automatic

    do {
        contract.write(
            contractMethod,
            parameters: parameters,
            extraData: extraData,
            transactionOptions: options)

    } catch {
        print("error:", error)
    }

Unfortunately, when I run this code, nothing is happening. I don't get any error but when I refresh the contract I see that number 9 is not passed.

I am using web3swift library, https://github.com/skywinder/web3swift/tree/master#send-erc-20-token. According to the documentation, it should be fine, but it is not working, therefore I would really appreciate some assistant to make it work or some example projects where I can take a look, because I also couldn't find anything.

I found some other project using JS and I see the people there use their private keys, maybe I also need it, but since it is not shown in the documentation, I was not sure how to use it.

Answer 1

The smart contract interaction requires a few initialisations steps:

1. Your wallet
2. KeyStoreManager
3. web3

Let's assume you already got a Metamask wallet. Separately you need to have a separate file containing the ABI of the smartContract you want to interact with. It is an array and having it in a Swift.String is easier.(I won't show you this step)

   struct Wallet {
    let address: String
    let data: Data
    let name: String
    let isHD: Bool
} 

    class SmartContractInteraction {
        var wallet: Wallet!
        var keystoreManager: KeystoreManager!
        var web3: web3!
        
        init() {
            wallet = initializeWallet()
            keystoreManager = getKeyStoreManager()
            web3 = initializeweb3()
        }
        
        private func initializeWallet() -> Wallet? {
            let password = "PasswordMetamask"
            let key = "AccountPrivateKey"
            let formattedKey = key.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines)
            let dataKey = Data.fromHex(formattedKey)!
            let name = "Account 1"
            do {
                let keystore = try EthereumKeystoreV3(privateKey: dataKey, password: password)!
                let keyData = try JSONEncoder().encode(keystore.keystoreParams)
                let address = keystore.addresses!.first!.address
                return Wallet(address: address, data: keyData, name: name, isHD: false)
            } catch {
                print("wallet init failed: \(error)")
                return nil
            }
        }
        
        private func getKeyStoreManager() -> KeystoreManager {
            let data = wallet.data
            let keystoreManager: KeystoreManager
            if wallet.isHD {
                let keystore = BIP32Keystore(data)!
                keystoreManager = KeystoreManager([keystore])
            } else {
                let keystore = EthereumKeystoreV3(data)!
                keystoreManager = KeystoreManager([keystore])
            }
            return keystoreManager
        }
        
        private func initializeweb3() -> web3 {
            let endpoint = "https://ropsten.infura.io/v3/....."
            let web3 = web3swift.web3(provider: Web3HttpProvider(URL(string: endpoint)!)!)
            web3.addKeystoreManager(keystoreManager)
            return web3
        }
        
        func callSmartContract() {
            let value: String = "1"
            let walletAddress = EthereumAddress(wallet.address)!
            let contractAddress = EthereumAddress("SmartContractAddress")!
            let contractMethod = "store"
            let contractABI = MyContractABI
            let abiVersion = 2
            let parameters = [9] as [AnyObject]
            let extraData: Data = Data()
            let contract = web3.contract(contractABI, at: contractAddress, abiVersion: abiVersion)!
            let amount = Web3.Utils.parseToBigUInt(value, units: .wei)
            var options = TransactionOptions.defaultOptions
            options.value = amount
            options.from = walletAddress
            options.gasPrice = .automatic
            options.gasLimit = .automatic
            let tx = contract.write(
                contractMethod,
                parameters: parameters,
                extraData: extraData,
                transactionOptions: options)!
            do {
                let password = "MetamaskPassword"
                let result = try tx.send(password: password)
                print(result)
            } catch {
                print("Token Balance failed: \(error)")
            }
        }
    }

Like this should work, I think passing the value/option.value in the smartContract call method isn't necessary, but since I don't have your ABI I prefer to not remove anything from how it worked for me. Also I am not sure about the type of the number you pass. Feel free to edit if this works without :)