Basic - Sending assets

neon-js provides basic out-of-the-box functionality for core functionalities:

  1. Sending assets (like NEO and GAS)
  2. Claiming GAS
  3. Invoking smart contracts
  4. Setting up your votes

In this guide, we will be running through how to use sendAsset API method.

In NEO, the normal transaction for transferring UTXO assets is the Contract Transaction. The sendAsset method will help create the Contract Transaction by pulling the necesssary data from a 3rd party data source (like neoscan), assembling the transaction and sending it to the network.

// import Neon, { api, wallet } from "@cityofzion/neon-js";
const { default: Neon, api, wallet } = require("@cityofzion/neon-js");

const sendingKey =
  "9ab7e154840daca3a2efadaf0df93cd3a5b51768c632f5433f86909d9b994a69";
const receivingAddress = "ALq7AWrhAueN6mJNqk6FHJjnsEoPRytLdW";
const network = "TestNet";

Creating intents

To send an asset, we first have to create an Intent. Intents represent the instructions to send assets to a specific address.

Do note that intents are only used for UTXO assets. If you are looking to send NEP5 tokens, this is not the correct way.

// We want to send 1 NEO and 1 GAS to ALq7AWrhAueN6mJNqk6FHJjnsEoPRytLdW
const intent = api.makeIntent({ NEO: 1, GAS: 0.00000001 }, receivingAddress);

console.log("\n\n--- Intents ---");
intent.forEach((i) => console.log(i));

To add more intents, simple useapi.makeIntent to create your intents. The method returns an array of intent objects so make sure to concatenate them together.

Selecting the API provider and network

We need to decide which provider shall we use. In this example, I shall be using TestNet with neoscan. As TestNet is built into the neon-js networks, we can retrieve it using its name TestNet instead of stating a url. For other networks such as your own private network, you will input the url of your private neoscan (for example, https://localhost:4000/api/main_net)

const apiProvider = new api.neoscan.instance(network);

console.log("\n\n--- API Provider ---");
console.log(apiProvider);

Creating the Account

We create an Account object to store our credentials. In this example, we are using a private key to create the account because we are also signing with the same private key. However, if you wish to use an external signing function (such as a ledger), you can create the account with an address and provide the signing function instead.

This account will be the account where the assets will come from.

const account = new wallet.Account(sendingKey);

console.log("\n\n--- Sending Address ---");
console.log(account);

Execute

We assemble the config object and sendAsset will do the following:

  1. Retrieve the balance of sendingKey from apiProvider.
  2. Retrieve a good rpc url from apiProvider.
  3. Assemble the transaction using the balance and intents.
  4. Sign the transaction using the sendingKey
  5. Submit the transaction to the network using the sendrawtransaction RPC call to the rpc url.
const config = {
  api: apiProvider, // The network to perform the action, MainNet or TestNet.
  account: account, // This is the address which the assets come from.
  intents: intent, // This is where you want to send assets to.
};

Neon.sendAsset(config)
  .then((config) => {
    console.log("\n\n--- Response ---");
    console.log(config.response);
  })
  .catch((config) => {
    console.log(config);
  });

sendAsset automatically does all the work in retrieving the balance, constructing the transaction, signing it and sending it off to the optimal node. When this is done, the promise returns the config object. The object is the same object passed in at the beginning with all the additional information used in the process appended to it. For example, the url field is the NEO node that sent the transaction to.

Here, we are interested in the response property, which contains the response from the RPC endpoint upon sending the transaction. If the transaction is successful, the txid is attached in the response. We can take this string and use it in a block explorer to check out our transaction.

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