Event Logging¶
Like Solidity and other EVM languages, Vyper can log events to be caught and displayed by user interfaces.
Example of Logging¶
This example is taken from the sample ERC20 contract and shows the basic flow of event logging.
# Events of the token.
Transfer: event({_from: indexed(address), _to: indexed(address), _value: uint256})
Approval: event({_owner: indexed(address), _spender: indexed(address), _value: uint256})
# Transfer some tokens from message sender to another address
def transfer(_to : address, _value : uint256) -> bool:
... Logic here to do the real work ...
# All done, log the event for listeners
log.Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _amount)
Let’s look at what this is doing. First, we declare two event types to log. The two events are similar in that they contain
two indexed address fields. Indexed fields do not make up part of the event data itself, but can be searched by clients that
want to catch the event. Also, each event contains one single data field, in each case called _value
. Events can contain several arguments with any names desired.
Next, in the transfer
function, after we do whatever work is necessary, we log the event. We pass three arguments, corresponding with the three arguments of the Transfer event declaration.
Clients listening to the events will declare and handle the events they are interested in using a library such as web3.js:
var abi = /* abi as generated by the compiler */;
var MyToken = web3.eth.contract(abi);
var myToken = MyToken.at("0x1234...ab67" /* address */);
// watch for changes in the callback
var event = myToken.Transfer(function(error, result) {
if (!error) {
var args = result.args;
console.log('value transferred = ', args._amount);
}
});
In this example, the listening client declares the event to listen for. Any time the contract sends this log event, the callback will be invoked.
Declaring Events¶
Let’s look at an event declaration in more detail.
Transfer: event({_from: indexed(address), _to: indexed(address), _value: uint256})
Event declarations look like state variable declarations but use the special keyword event. event takes its arguments that consists of all the arguments to be passed as part of the event. Typical events will contain two kinds of arguments:
- Indexed arguments, which can be searched for by listeners. Each indexed argument is identified by the
indexed
keyword. Here, each indexed argument is an address. You can have any number of indexed arguments, but indexed arguments are not passed directly to listeners, although some of this information (such as the sender) may be available in the listener’s results object. - Value arguments, which are passed through to listeners. You can have any number of value arguments and they can have arbitrary names, but each is limited by the EVM to be no more than 32 bytes.
Note that while the argument definition syntax looks like a Python dictionary, it’s actually an order-sensitive definition. (Python dictionaries maintain order starting with 3.7.) Thus, the first element (_from
) will be matched up with the first argument passed in the log.Transfer call.
Logging Events¶
Once an event is declared, you can log (send) events. You can send events as many times as you want to. Please note that events sent do not take state storage and thus do not cost gas: this makes events a good way to save some information. However, the drawback is that events are not available to contracts, only to clients.
Logging events is done using the magic keyword log
:
log.Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _amount)
The order and types of arguments sent needs to match up with the order of declarations in the dictionary.
Listening for Events¶
In the example listener above, the result
arg actually passes a large amount of information. Here we’re most interested in result.args
. This is an object with properties that match the properties declared in the event. Note that this object does not contain the indexed properties, which can only be searched in the original myToken.Transfer
that created the callback.