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Quickstart

Overview

This quickstart guide will teach you the fundamentals of using Taqueria in 10 minutes by going through the process of running some basic tasks in Taqueria from the CLI

What you will accomplish:

  • Initialize a new Taqueria project
  • Install plugins for LIGO, Flextesa, and Taquito
  • Creating a new LIGO contract, along with its associated storage list and parameter list files.
  • Compile the LIGO smart contract
  • Start a local Flextesa sandbox
  • Originate the compiled smart contract to the sandbox
  • Interact with the smart contract deployed to the sandbox

Requirements

To successfully follow this guide, you must ensure that:

  • The Taqueria CLI has been installed and is available in your $PATH
  • Docker v20.10.12 (or later) is installed and currently running
  • Node.js v16.16 or later. (v17.x.x or later is not supported)
note

The Taqueria VS Code Extension provides direct access to Taqueria tasks. Under the hood, the VS Code Extension makes calls to the CLI, so you can be assured the behaviour of tasks will remain consistent regardless of whether they are executed from a terminal or the command palette. The steps in this guide are for using the Taqueria CLI, but you can also run the commands from the Taqueria extension via the VS Code command palette if you prefer

Starting a Taqueria Project

There are two things required to start using Taqueria on a project

First, the project must have been initialized by Taqueria. This process creates a hidden directory .taq inside the project directory that contains the configuration and state files required by Taqueria, and ensures the required directories contracts and artifacts have been created

Taqueria provides the command init which will create a new directory with the correct structure and configuration. To create a new Taqueria project called my-first-project, run the command:

taq init my-first-project

Or run the following if you'd like to have the necessary plugins pre-installed for you on initialization (assuming you're a LIGO developer):

taq init my-first-project --workflow ligo

After the project has been initialized you are ready to start working with Taqueria. Navigate to your project directory and we will explore working with plugins:

cd my-first-project

Working with Plugins

Now that the project has been properly initialized, plugins can be installed to provide support for specific functionality such as compilation, smart contract origination, or running sandbox environments

Plugins are installed using the taq install command which appears in the command list once a project is initialized. You can view the list of commands available in the current project context by running taq --help from the CLI. It should look something like this:

❯ taq --help
taq <command>

Commands:
taq init [projectDir] Initialize a new project
taq opt-in Opt-in to sharing anonymous usage analytics
taq opt-out Opt-out of sharing anonymous usage analytics
taq install <pluginName> Install a plugin
taq uninstall <pluginName> Uninstall a plugin

Once a plugin has been installed, you will see the additional commands provided by the plugin added to the list

Working with LIGO Smart Contracts

To add support for the LIGO smart contract language, install the LIGO plugin by running:

taq install @taqueria/plugin-ligo

Copy the following 3 code snippets, with the names suggested at the top of each code snippets, to the contracts folder of your Taqueria project

Counter.mligo
module Counter = struct
type storage = int

type ret = operation list * storage

(* Three entrypoints *)

[@entry]
let increment (delta : int) (store : storage) : ret = [], store + delta

[@entry]
let decrement (delta : int) (store : storage) : ret = [], store - delta

[@entry]
let reset (() : unit) (_ : storage) : ret = [], 0
end
Counter.storageList.mligo
#import "Counter.mligo" "Contract"

// Define your initial storage values as a list of LIGO variable definitions, the first of which will be considered the default value to be used for origination later on
let initial_count = 42
let another_count: Contract.Counter.storage = 23 + 18 + 1
Counter.parameterList.mligo
#import "Counter.mligo" "Contract"
let increment_by_3: Contract.Counter parameter_of = Increment 3

You can now compile this contract, along with its storage and parameter values, by simply running the following command from the root of the project directory:

taq compile Counter.mligo

Taqueria will then output the following, and the artifacts created:

❯ taq compile counter.mligo                     
┌───────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Source │ Artifact │
├───────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Counter.mligo/Counter │ artifacts/Counter.tz │
│ │ artifacts/Counter.default_storage.tz │
│ │ artifacts/Counter.storage.another_count.tz │
│ │ artifacts/Counter.parameter.increment_by_3.tz │
└───────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Compiled 1 contract(s) in "Counter.mligo"

If you open this file (artifacts/Counter.tz), you can view the raw Michelson code which will later be originated to the sandbox:

{ parameter (or (or (int %decrement) (int %increment)) (unit %reset)) ;
storage int ;
code { UNPAIR ;
IF_LEFT { IF_LEFT { SWAP ; SUB } { ADD } } { DROP 2 ; PUSH int 0 } ;
NIL operation ;
PAIR } }

Starting a Flextesa Sandbox

The next step is to install the Flextesa plugin which provides a local Tezos sandbox network:

taq install @taqueria/plugin-flextesa

Once installed, the plugin provides three commands to start, stop, and query a sandbox:

  • taq start sandbox [sandboxName]
  • taq stop sandbox [sandboxName]
  • taq list accounts [sandboxName]
note

Sandboxes are configured in the project's Taqueria configuration file (.taq/config.json). Each named sandbox configuration can then be called from the CLI. By default, every Taqueria project comes pre-configured with a sandbox named local

Start up the sandbox named local by running:

taq start sandbox local

To confirm the sandbox is running, query the sandbox for the account information:

taq list accounts local

If successful, you will see a list of the accounts and balances specified in the config.json file that have been created on the Tezos blockchain in the sandbox:

❯ taq list accounts local
┌─────────┬─────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Account │ Balance │ Address │
├─────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ bob │ 3000 ꜩ │ tz1aSkwEot3L2kmUvcoxzjMomb9mvBNuzFK6 │
├─────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ alice │ 3000 ꜩ │ tz1VSUr8wwNhLAzempoch5d6hLRiTh8Cjcjb │
├─────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ john │ 3000 ꜩ │ tz1Zwoh1QCVAvJ4sVTojMp9pLYp6Ji4NoZy6 │
├─────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ jane │ 3000 ꜩ │ tz1aHUAC4oviwJuZF1EvVSvFz7cu9KMNYBph │
├─────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ joe │ 3000 ꜩ │ tz1MVGjgD1YtAPwohsSfk8i3ZiT1yEGM2YXB │
└─────────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

Originating a Contract with Taquito

With a sandbox now running, the next step is to originate the counter.tz file to the sandbox network using the Taquito plugin

First, install the plugin:

taq install @taqueria/plugin-taquito

Now you can originate the contract by running:

taq originate counter.tz

This will originate counter.tz in the artifacts directory to the sandbox and return the on-chain address of the originated contract. This will look something like this:

┌────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┬─────────┬─────────────┐
│ Contract │ Address │ Alias │ Destination │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼─────────┼─────────────┤
│ counter.tz │ KT1Ayz8qos7G4U3Jucp6QWoM7ayhbShNXcat │ counter │ local │
└────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────────┘

Interacting with a deployed Contract with Taquito

With the sandbox still running, the last step is to interact with the contract you just deployed to your sandbox. You may use its alias or its address directly

To do that, run:

taq transfer counter --param counter.parameter.increment_by_3.tz

This will call the counter contract's entrypoint increment and will increment the storage by 3. The output will look something like this:

┌────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┬───────────────────┬────────────┬────────────────────────┐
│ Contract Alias │ Contract Address │ Mutez Transfer │ Parameter │ Entrypoint │ Destination │
├────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ counter │ KT1Ayz8qos7G4U3Jucp6QWoM7ayhbShNXcat │ 0 │ (Left (Right 3 )) │ default │ http://localhost:20000 │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │
└────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┴───────────────────┴────────────┴────────────────────────┘

Finishing Up

Congratulations! At this point, you have run through the basic usage of Taqueria including:

  • Initializing a new Taqueria project
  • Installing plugins for LIGO, Flextesa, and Taquito
  • Creating a new LIGO contract, along with its associated storage list and parameter list files
  • Compiling a LIGO smart contract
  • Starting and querying a local Flextesa sandbox
  • Originating a compiled smart contract to the sandbox
  • Interacting with a smart contract deployed to the sandbox

For more details on the usage of specific Taqueria tasks, you can refer to the plugin documentation which contains additional context, configuration, and usage of the many Taqueria tasks; or continue on with the getting started guides