Lesson 5: property 'retrieve' does not exist on type 'BaseContract'

[r-bytes]

Hi,

I'm using TypeScript for this course with solidity version 0.8.19.
For ethers I'm using the latest version which is 6.6.7 at this moment. For the purpose of this error I've already tried to downgrade ethers to version 6.0

When I try to call a method on my SimpleStorage.sol contract from my typescript file, I'm getting the following type error:

Property 'retrieve' does not exist on type 'BaseContract & { deploymentTransaction(): ContractTransactionResponse; } & Omit<BaseContract, keyof BaseContract>'.

This is the SimpeStorage contract:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity 0.8.19;

contract SimpleStorage {
    uint256 favoriteNumber;
    
    // view, pure
    function retrieve() public view returns (uint256){
        return favoriteNumber;
    }
}

This is the way I'm interacting with the contract from my deploy.ts file:

import { BaseContract, ContractFactory, ContractTransactionReceipt, JsonRpcProvider, Wallet, ethers } from "ethers";

async function main() {
  const contractFactory: ContractFactory<any[]> = new ContractFactory(abi, binary, wallet);
  
  /* Type "any" is working */
  const contract: BaseContract = await contractFactory.deploy({ gasLimit: 2000000 });

  /* TYPE ERROR => retrieve doesn't exist on type BaseContract */
  const currentFavoriteNumber = await contract.retrieve()
}

main()
  .then(() => process.exit(0))
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error(error);
    process.exit(1);
  });

When I assign type "any" to my contract variable, it's working fine but that not the purpose of TypeScript.

Does any one know how to fix this type error?

[Nlferu]

Hello @r-bytes

Contracts are not type any. First of all you should import contracts like below:

import { BaseContract } from "../../typechain-types"

then you can specify it like below:

let baseContract: BaseContract

baseContract = await ethers.getContract("BaseContract")

const currentNum = await baseContract.retrieve()

or do below with Factory

import { SimpleStorage, SimpleStorage__factory } from "../typechain"

let simpleStorage: SimpleStorage
let SimpleStorageFactory: SimpleStorage__factory

SimpleStorageFactory = (await ethers.getContractFactory("SimpleStorage")) as SimpleStorage__factory
simpleStorage = await SimpleStorageFactory.deploy()

const num = simpleStorage.retrieve()

[r-bytes]

Hi @Neftyr,

Thanks for the quick response!
I'm not too familiar with typechain and typechain-types but I will check it out :)

[Nikzadkhan]

in this section

import { BaseContract } from "../../typechain-types"<<<<<<<<
(typechain-types) is what is this contract name or it is some built-in library?

[Nlferu]

@Nikzadkhan

The typechain-types is not a contract name nor a built-in library. It is a folder that contains TypeScript typings generated by TypeChain, a tool used in the Ethereum development environment. typechain-types refers to the directory where TypeChain has generated the TypeScript types for contract.

[r-bytes]

Update: I tried several solutions including the one mentioned here from @Neftyr.

Unfortunately I was unable to fix the issue. So finally I choose to downgrade ethers to version 5.7.2 and with success..
I created an issue on the github from ethers.

For more info: https://github.com/ethers-io/ethers.js/issues/4287

[AkiraMatthew]

Same here, it was helpful to find your solution. It looks like the issue is with the last version compiling from typescript to javascript, there is no '.retrieve()' function in the contract

[preciousnwaoha]

This is what you should do in ethersjs v6:

    import { Contract } from "ethers";
    //...
    const response = await (contract!.connect(signer!) as Contract).retrieve()
    //...

No stress ❤