Troubleshooting¶

Do you have a sample web3j project¶

Yes, refer to the web3j sample project outlined in the Quickstart.

I'm submitting a transaction, but it's not being mined¶

After creating and sending a transaction, you receive a transaction hash, however calling eth_getTransactionReceipt always returns a blank value, indicating the transaction has not been mined:

String transactionHash = sendTransaction(...);

// you loop through the following expecting to eventually get a receipt once the transaction
// is mined
EthGetTransactionReceipt.TransactionReceipt transactionReceipt =
        web3j.ethGetTransactionReceipt(transactionHash).sendAsync().get();

if (!transactionReceipt.isPresent()) {
    // try again, ad infinitum
}

However, you never receive a transaction receipt. Unfortunately there may not be a an error in your Ethereum client indicating any issues with the transaction:

I1025 18:13:32.817691 eth/api.go:1185] Tx(0xeaac9aab7f9aeab189acd8714c5a60c7424f86820884b815c4448cfcd4d9fc79) to: 0x9c98e381edc5fe1ac514935f3cc3edaa764cf004

The easiest way to see if the submission is waiting to mined is to refer to Etherscan and search for the address the transaction was sent using https://testnet.etherscan.io/address/0x... If the submission has been successful it should be visible in Etherscan within seconds of you performing the transaction submission. The wait is for the mining to take place.

If there is no sign of it then the transaction has vanished into the ether (sorry). The likely cause of this is likely to be to do with the transaction's nonce either not being set, or being too low. Please refer to the section Transaction nonce for more information.

I want to see details of the JSON-RPC requests and responses¶

web3j uses the SLF4J logging facade, which you can easily integrate with your preferred logging framework. One lightweight approach is to use LOGBack, which is already configured in the integration-tests module.

Include the LOGBack dependencies listed in integration-tests/build.gradle and associated log configuration as per integration-tests/src/test/resources/logback-test.xml.

Note: if you are configuring logging for an application (not tests), you will need to ensure that the Logback dependencies are configured as compile dependencies, and that the configuration file is named and located in src/main/resources/logback.xml.

I want to obtain some Ether on Testnet, but don't want to have to mine it myself¶

Please refer to the Ethereum testnets for how to obtain some Ether.

How do I obtain the return value from a smart contract method invoked by a transaction?¶

You can't. It is not possible to return values from methods on smart contracts that are called as part of a transaction. If you wish to read a value during a transaction, you must use Events. To query values from smart contracts you must use a call, which is separate to a transaction. These methods should be marked as constant functions. Solidity smart contract wrappers created by web3j handle these differences for you.

The following StackExchange post is useful for background.

Is it possible to send arbitrary text with transactions?¶

Yes it is. Text should be ASCII encoded and provided as a hexadecimal String in the data field of the transaction. This is demonstrated below:

RawTransaction.createTransaction(
        <nonce>, GAS_PRICE, GAS_LIMIT, "0x<address>", <amount>, "0x<hex encoded text>");

byte[] signedMessage = TransactionEncoder.signMessage(rawTransaction, ALICE);
String hexValue = Numeric.toHexString(signedMessage);

EthSendTransaction ethSendTransaction =
        web3j.ethSendRawTransaction(hexValue).send();
String transactionHash = ethSendTransaction.getTransactionHash();
...

Note: Please ensure you increase the gas limit on the transaction to allow for the storage of text.

The following StackExchange post is useful for background.

I've generated my smart contract wrapper, but the binary for the smart contract is empty?¶

If you have defined an interface in Solidity, but one of your method implementations doesn't match the original interface definitions, the produced binary will be blank.

In the following example:

contract Web3jToken is ERC20Basic, Ownable {
    ...
    function transfer(address _from, address _to, uint256 _value) onlyOwner returns (bool) {
    ...
}

We forgot to define the from parameter in one of the inherited contracts:

contract ERC20Basic {
    ...
    function transfer(address to, uint256 value) returns (bool);
    ...
}

The Solidity compiler will not complain about this, however, the produced binary file for the Web3jToken will be blank.

My ENS lookups are failing¶

Are you sure that you are connecting to the correct network to perform the lookup?

If web3j is telling you that the node is not in sync, you may need to change the syncThreshold in the ENS resolver.

Where can I get commercial support for web3j?¶

Commercial support and training is available from web3labs.