Truffle and Next.js
Rapid Ethereum Dapp Development
A Minimal Smart Contract Development Boilerplate¶
Truffle is great for developing Solidity smart contracts, but building a React frontend for a smart contract is often a chore. Next.js is one of the easiest ways to build such a frontend and the integration between Truffle and Next.js is what this boilerplate is trying to demonstrate.
There are two major features:
-
A plain
truffle init
project is used as the base (along with a SimpleStorage example contract). -
A Next.js project resides in the
client
directory with a symlink to the output folder of the contract ABI definitions. The Next.js app also provides a simple skeleton for connecting to and interacting with the smart contract on a network.
For more information on how the frontend works, go read the README.md located in the client
directory.
Installation¶
-
Install Truffle globally.
npm install -g truffle
-
Download the box. This also takes care of installing the necessary dependencies.
truffle unbox adrianmcli/truffle-next
-
Run the development console.
truffle develop
-
Compile and migrate the smart contracts. Note inside the development console we don't preface commands with
truffle
.compile migrate
-
Run the next.js server for the front-end. Smart contract changes must be manually recompiled and migrated.
// Change directory to the front-end folder cd client // Serves the front-end on http://localhost:3000 npm run dev
-
Truffle can run tests written in Solidity or JavaScript against your smart contracts. Note the command varies slightly if you're in or outside of the development console.
// If inside the development console. test // If outside the development console.. truffle test
Running with MetaMask¶
Since truffle develop
exposes the blockchain onto port 9545
, you'll need to add a Custom RPC network of http://localhost:9545
in your MetaMask to make it work.
Running with TestRPC¶
We highly recommend using truffle develop
over testrpc
, but if you want to use testrpc
, there are a couple things you need to do:
- Change Line 6 of
client/lib/getWeb3.js
to uselocalhost:8545
instead oflocalhost:9545
so we refer totestrpc
instead oftruffle develop
. - Run your
testrpc
with the following command (because reasons):
testrpc --gasLimit 6721975 --gasPrice 100000000000