User based testing pattern

A common pattern used in dapptools and foundry projects is a 'User Contract'. It is an abstraction over the contract interaction that looks something like this (from DSToken)

contract TokenUser {
    DSToken  token;

    constructor(DSToken token_) public {
        token = token_;
    }

    function doApprove(address spender, uint amount)
        public
        returns (bool)
    {
        return token.approve(spender, amount);
    }
    //...
}

And in the test contract, we can use it like this

user1 = new TokenUser(token);
user1.doApprove(user2);

This is an interesting pattern as it lets you wrap contracts and test them like how a user would interact with them. Its advantage shines really well when you need to test with multiple user addresses.

Blacksmiths to use the foundry

I took this pattern a step further and created a full-fledged contract generator that will create these 'User Contracts', along with a bunch of UX niceties. You can create a user with a particular address or private key and it can perform all operations an EOA can. All this can be automated by running the blacksmith.js script (sorry, not in rust yet). It automatically creates User contracts for all contracts in your foundry project directory.

Features

Wrap multiple target contracts

user1.dex.swap(100);
user1.factory.pause(true);
user1.token.transfer(user2.addr, 100);

Sign using private key

(uint8 v, bytes32 r, bytes32 s) = user1.sign("blacksmith");

Call arbiraty contracts

user1.call{value:10}(contract_address, "calldata");

Set user address's balance

user1.deal(100);

Zero code size at address

user1.addr.code.length // is zero

The blacksmith.js script creates the baseBlacksmith.sol that contains basic functions like call, sign and deal. It also creates TargetBS.sol for all Target contracts in the project directory. To Base User contract (Blacksmith) takes in an address and a private key as constructor params. If the private key is zero, the provided address is used as the user's address, else the address is calculated from the private key.

constructor( address _addr, uint256 _privateKey, address _target) {
    addr = _privateKey == 0 ? _addr : bsvm.addr(_privateKey);
    privateKey = _privateKey;
    target = payable(_target);
}

To create a User contract to interact with a Target contract, you import TargetBS contract. Along with the address and private key, it also takes in the target contract's address

constructor( address _addr, uint256 _privateKey, address _target) {
    addr = _privateKey == 0 ? _addr : bsvm.addr(_privateKey);
    privateKey = _privateKey;
    target = payable(_target);
}

To create a user object, you can create a struct and add the required interface. The below code is all you'll need to write to get started with testing. Rest is taken care of by blacksmith script.

struct User {
    address addr;  // to avoid external call, we save it in the struct
    Blacksmith base;  // contains call(), sign(), deal()
    FooTokenBS foo;  // interacts with FooToken contract
    BarTokenBS bar;  // interacts with BarToken contract
}

function createUser(address _addr, uint256 _privateKey) public returns (User memory) {
    Blacksmith base = new Blacksmith(_addr, _privateKey);
    FooTokenBS _foo = new FooTokenBS(_addr, _privateKey, address(foo));
    BarTokenBS _bar = new BarTokenBS(_addr, _privateKey, address(bar));
    base.deal(100);
    return User(base.addr(), base, _foo, _bar);
}

function setUp() public {
    foo = new FooToken();
    bar = new BarToken();
    alice = createUser(address(0), 111);  // addrss will be 0x052b91ad9732d1bce0ddae15a4545e5c65d02443
    bob = createUser(address(111), 0);  // address will be 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000006f
    eve = createUser(address(0), 0);  // address will be 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
}

Now you can use it directly in your test functions

function testSomething() public {
    bob.foo.approve(alice.addr, 10);
    alice.foo.transferFrom(bob.addr, alice.addr, 10);
    alice.bar.approve(eve.addr, 100);
    eve.transferFrom(bob.addr, eve.addr, 50);
    eve.call{value:10}(alice.ddr, "");
    (uint8 v, bytes32 r, bytes32 s) = alice.sign("blacksmith");
}

Usage

To get started with blacksmith, download blacksmith.js to the foundry project’s root directory.

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pbshgthm/blacksmith/main/blacksmith.js
node blacksmith.js create #in foundry project's root directory

This will run forge build and then create /src/test/blacksmith directory with user contracts in Target.bs.sol.

pbshgthm/blacksmith

pbshgthm

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