# Namespace Format

# Codec Output Format

## Module information

This module primarily defines TypeScript types for the output format used in results provided by packages `@truffle/decoder@>=4.0.0` and `@truffle/codec@>=0.1.0`.

See below for complete listing or continue reading Format information to learn about this format.

### How to import

Import either as part of Codec or by itself:

    // when importing entire Codec, use Codec.Format.*:
    import * as Codec from "@truffle/codec";

    // or import Format directly:
    import { Format } from "@truffle/codec";

## Format information

This format is intended for use in smart contract and dapp development tools and libraries, and for use in display contexts, such as when building on-screen components to show transaction and smart contract state information.

This format seeks to provide an exhaustive schema for JavaScript objects to encode lossless, machine-readable representations of all possible Solidity and ABI data types and all possible values of those types.

This format targets types and values understood by the Solidity programming language and the Contract ABI specification, within the context of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and in raw data for transactions and logs according to the Ethereum JSON RPC.

Objects in this format may be deeply nested and/or contain circular dependencies. As such, do not serialize objects in this format or otherwise attempt to display them in full without considering potential risk. Objects in this format are for the machine to read, not humans! This module provides utilities for inspecting objects in this format, including the safe [[Format.Utils.Inspect.ResultInspector]] wrapper (for util.inspect), and the unsafe [[Format.Utils.Inspect.unsafeNativize]] function. For more information, please see the documentation for those utilities.

### Specification

Individual decoded values are represented by objects of the type [[Format.Values.Result]], which contain the following fields:

1. `type`: This is a [[Format.Types.Type|`Type`]] object describing the value's type. Each `Type` has a `typeClass` field describing the overall broad type, such as `"uint"` or `"bytes"`, together with additional information that gives the specific type. For full detail, see [[Format.Types]].

2. `kind`: This is either `"value"`, in which case the `Result` is a [[Format.Values.Value|`Value`]], or `"error"`, in which case the `Result` is an [[Format.Errors.ErrorResult|`ErrorResult`]]. In the former case, there will be a `value` field containin the decoded value. In the latter case, there will be an `error` field indicating what went wrong. Warning: When decoding a complex type, such as an array, mapping, or array, getting a kind of `"value"` does not necessarily mean the individual elements were decoded successfully. Even if the `Result` for the array (mapping, struct) as a whole has kind `"value"`, the elements might still have kind `"error"`.

3. `value`: As mentioned, this is included when `kind` is equal to `"value"`. It contains information about the actual decoded value. See [[Format.Values|`Format.Values`]] for more information.

4. `error`: The alternative to `value`. Generally includes information about the raw data that led to the error. See [[Format.Errors|`Format.Errors`]] for more information.

5. `interpretations`: This field will also be present when `kind` is equal to `"value"`; it is an object that may contain additional information about the decoded value beyond what is found in `value`. (All fields in `interpretations` are always optional and will be included only when applicable.) You may wonder, what is the difference between `value` and `interpretations`? The answer is that the distinction is largely historical; `interpretations` was not originally part of the format, and it was added so that there would be a place to put new additional information we wanted to include without having to expand `value`. See [[Format.Values|`Format.Values`]] for more information.

6. `reference`: This field is a debugger-only feature and does not apply to results returned by @truffle/decoder, so it won't be documented here.

### Values vs. errors

It's worth taking a moment here to answer the question: What counts as a value, and what counts as an error?

In general, the answer is that anything that can be generated via Solidity alone (i.e. no assembly), with correctly-encoded inputs, and without making use of compiler bugs, is a value, not an error. That means that, for instance, the following things are values, not errors:

- A variable of contract type whose address does not actually hold a contract of that type;
- An external function pointer that does not correspond to a valid function;
- A string containing invalid UTF-8;
- ..., etc.

By contrast, the following are errors:

- A `bool` which is neither `false` (0) nor `true` (1);
- An `enum` which is out of range;
- ..., etc.

(You may be wondering about the enum case here, because if you go sufficiently far back, to Solidity 0.4.4 or earlier, it was possible to generate out-of-range enums without resorting to assembly or compiler bugs. However, enums are only supported in full mode (see Notes on decoding modes), which only supports 0.4.12 and later, so we consider out-of-range enums an error. There are also additional technical reasons why supporting out-of-range enums as a value would be difficult.)

There are three special cases here that are likely worthy of note.

Firstly, internal function pointers currently can't be meaningfully decoded via @truffle/decoder. However, they decode to a bare-bones value, not an error, as it is (in a sense) our own fault that we can't decode these, so it doesn't make sense to report an error, which would mean that something is wrong with the encoded data itself. This value that it decodes to will give the program counter values it corresponds to, but will not include the function name or defining class, as @truffle/decoder is not presently capable of that. For now, full decoding of internal function pointers remains a debugger-only feature. (But limited support for this via @truffle/decoder is planned for the future.)

(When using the debugger, an invalid internal function pointer will decode to an error. However, when using @truffle/decoder, we have no way of discerning whether the pointer is valid or not, so internal function pointers will always decode to a value, if an uninformative one.)

Secondly, when decoding events, it is impossible to decode indexed parameters of reference type. Thus, these decode to an error (`IndexedReferenceTypeError`, which see) rather than to a value.

Thirdly, the decoder is currently limited when it comes to decoding state variables that are declared constant, and not all such variables are yet supported in decoding; attempting to decode one of these that is not currently supported will yield an error.

Similarly, there are various things that decode to errors for technical reasons. Objects with encoded length fields larger than what fits in a JavaScript safe integer, or pointed to by pointers with values larger than what fits in a JavaScript safe integer, will decode to errors, even if they may technically be legal. Such cases are impractical to handle and should never come up in real use so we decode them to errors. Errors may also be returned in case of an error in attempting to read the data to be decoded.

Finally, except when decoding events, we do not return an error if the pointers in an ABI-encoded array or tuple are arranged in a nonstandard way, or if strings or bytestrings are incorrectly padded, because it is not worth the trouble to detect these conditions.

## Notes on this documentation

Most of this doesn't have explanatory documentation because it's largely self-explanatory, but particularly non-obvious parts have been documented for clarity.

A note on optional fields: A number of types or values have optional fields. These contain helpful but non-essential information, or information which for technical reasons we can't guarantee we can determine.

- Defined in codec/lib/format/index.ts:1

### Index

### Namespaces - Main Format

Errors
Types
Values

### Namespaces - Other

Utils

Generated using TypeDoc