return value of web3.eth.sendTransaction

[palango]

• Version: 4.0.0-beta.11
• Python: 3.6
• OS: osx

What was wrong?

The return value of web3.eth.sendTransaction(...) seems to be HexBytes, not a str as shown in the docs.

How can it be fixed?

Fix the return value or fix the docs.

[carver]

👍 documentation fix TODO
(plus all the other methods that were changed to HexBytes)

[lmittmann]

Why has the return value been changed to HexBytes? I always need the string representation.

This is one of many changes in 4.0.0 that require lots of updates in my code base and are really annoying. Now I need to mess up my code with lots of Web3.toHex(...) conversions.

[pipermerriam]

@lmittmann I'm sorry that the v3 -> v4 changes are causing you problems, however, there are good reasons behind all of these changes.

The HexBytes one specifically is part of a broader change removing ambiguity about return values and input values.

Given a string "0xabcd" we can't infer if this is the hex encoded value b'\xab\xcd', or the literal string "0xabcd". When returning values like this, we chose to use a bytes representation as that removes the ambiguity. However, we found that returning bytes was very unfriendly UX when inspecting return values, so we came up with a thin wrapper around the bytes type, HexBytes that when represented in a terminal, shows the hex encoded value.

[carver]

Now I need to mess up my code with lots of Web3.toHex(...) conversions.

Maybe a small solace, but from HexBytes, you can also call val.hex().