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Version: 5.x

Call Your Contract

Now that your contract has been fully deployed, we can start interacting with it! Flipper only has two functions: flip() and get(). We will show you what it's like to play with both of them.

RPC calls vs. Transactions​

There are two ways of calling a contract:

Dry-run via RPC​

Remote procedure calls, or RPC methods, are a way for an external program – for example, a browser or front-end application – to communicate with a Substrate node. For example, you might use an RPC method to read a stored value, submit a transaction, or request information about the chain a node is connected to.

If a user interface displays the value of a contract (e.g. the balance of an account in an ERC-20 contract), then this is typically done via RPC. Specifically it is done by executing a synchronous dry-run of the contract method and returning its result. The following schema depicts this.

Contract dry-run via RPC

RPC calls don't require any tokens, they just require a connection to a node in the network. It's important to note that the execution won't result in any state mutations on the blockchain, it really just is a dry-run.

State mutating via submitting a Transaction​

The other method of executing a call to a contract is by submitting a transaction on-chain. This requires tokens of the network to pay for the cost of the transaction. The transaction will be put in a transaction pool and asynchronously processed. The important implication here is that during submission of the transaction no result is available. This is different from an RPC call.

The typical pattern for how a client can recognize the result of the contract call is to have the contract emit an event and have the client actively listen for such an event. Typically libraries (like polkadot-js/api) provide API functions to do just that. The important take-away is that contract developers have to make sure that events are emitted if they want clients to be able to pick up on them.

Contract execution via transaction

Using the Contracts UI​

1. get() function​

We set the initial value of the Flipper contract value to false when we instantiated the contract. Let's check that this is the case.

In the Message to Send section, select the "get(): bool" message and accept the default values for the other options.

Press "Read" and confirm that it returns the value false:

An image of Flipper RPC call with false

2. flip() function​

So let's make the value turn true now!

The alternative message to send with the UI is flip(). Again, accept the default values for the other options and click Call contract

An image of a Flipper transaction

If the transaction was successful, we should then be able to go back to the get() function and see our updated storage:

An image of Flipper RPC call with true

Using cargo-contract​

Calling a contract can also be done via the command-line!

1. get() function​

cargo contract build
cargo contract upload --suri //Alice

cargo contract instantiate --execute --suri //Alice --args true
# The output of this command will contain the contract address,
# insert it in the command below.
# e.g  Contract 5DXR2MxThkyZvG3s4ubu9yRdNiifchZ9eNV8i6ErGx6u1sea


cargo contract call --contract <insert-contract-address> --message get --suri //Alice

2. flip() function​

cargo contract call --contract <insert-contract-address> --message flip --execute --suri //Alice