Background

What are “Artifacts”?

Currently, Truffle artifacts are stored as JSON files in a project’s build/contracts/ directory.

Artifact files follow a formally-specified JSON-Schema [1], available in the trufflesuite/truffle-contract-schema repository. This schema’s latest version is v3.0.1.

[1]JSON Schema is a vocabulary that allows you to annotate and validate JSON documents.

Truffle’s Architecture

For background, there are a number of relevant existing components.

Truffle Artifactor

Provided by the truffle-artifactor package.

The artifactor saves contract abstractions to disk. Specifically, this writes to the configured contracts_build_directory.

component Artifactor frame "interface" as ArtifactorInterface { () "save(abstraction)" as Save () "saveAll(abstractions)" as SaveAll } Artifactor -up- Save Artifactor -up- SaveAll

Truffle Resolver

Provided by the truffle-resolver package.

The resolver queries the artifacts, either resolving a contract name (or, deprecated: a source filename) to the corresponding artifact file, and/or instantiating a contract abstraction from the artifact automatically.

component Resolver frame "interface" as ResolverInterface { () "require(contractName, searchPath?)" as Require () "resolve(contractName, importedFrom?)" as Resolve } Resolver -up- Require Resolver -up- Resolve

Truffle Config

Provided by the truffle-config package.

Within the context of Truffle, config objects are used as a singleton object that serves all parts of Truffle with context about the user’s project.

Currently, a Truffle config object contains a reference to an artifactor and a resolver.

skinparam nodesep 50 component Config () Artifactor () Resolver ' positioning Artifactor -[hidden]right-> Resolver note as N1 these refer to ""interface""s above end note Resolver .right. N1 Config .down. Artifactor Config .down. Resolver component "Artifactor" as BaseArtifactor component "Resolver" as BaseResolver BaseArtifactor -up- Artifactor BaseResolver -up- Resolver