Writing

EtherFlow
I created an open-source tool for interacting with an Ethereum node and getting sample code.


Published over 4 years ago.

Ethereum

A lot of people think Ethereum is the next big platform; I'm one of them. I've written a few smart contracts for fun to understand the platform. Although there is tooling available, and that toolchain is much better than the one surrounding Bitcoin, Ethereums dev tools are still not as simple or robust as one would hope. 

So I've decided to build a tool I wish existed when debugging and interacting with Ethereum nodes.

Introducing EtherFlow

EtherFlow is a tool for sending requests to Ethereum JSON-RPC endpoints without having to write code. It supports most standard RPC methods and the trace module for Parity/OpenEthereum. It updates the URL and embeds your RPC endpoint, preferred library, method call, and params in the URL for easy sharing to any relevant parties.

In addition to being able to debug calls to an Ethereum node, it aims to be a Rosetta Stone of sorts, allowing you to see how a particular RPC method is implemented across many different web3 libraries. Using your inputs, it generates a code example using the selected library. To start, we're supporting Web3.js and Ethers.js.

I'm releasing it under the MIT license, so anyone can fork, make it better, etc.

You can try it live here.

What's Next?

I would love some help building this out; there is a shortlist of features I think are missing from the experience:

1. Support for raw cURL requests
2. Support for Smart Contract calling and tracing with Ethers.js and Web3.js
3. Support eth_newFilter and associated methods for web3.js
4. Add tests!

If you'd like to get involved, the GitHub is here, and QuikNode is hosting a version here. Once we have these features built in, I'll make a bigger push to get some eyes on this project so it can help whoever needs it.

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