Tools, Frameworks, Components, and Services

In this chapter, you'll learn about several important tools that are available for Ethereum developers to create powerful decentralized applications and smart contracts that scale and are secure enough to serve millions of potential users. The world of Ethereum development is full of useful tools that are intended to make your life easier when creating complex decentralized applications and smart contracts that use the latest changes to Solidity. Knowing what's out there and how it works will really help you move forward in your development projects because you'll be able to create better and faster applications with less bug-prone code.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Using developer tools
• Understanding Ethereum communication tools
• Making sense of the Ethereum infrastructure
• Learning Ethereum testing...

Using developer tools

Developer tools such as integrated development environments (IDEs), faucets, and even smart contract languages are essential things a developer must control to have a practical understanding of how to develop smart contracts efficiently.

Development frameworks

There are several development frameworks that provide you with a set of utilities for creating smart contracts in an environment where you can test your code and verify it so that you improve your development speed with higher quality code. Let's see some of the most popular ones to decide which one should be used at any given moment:

• Truffle: This is the biggest development framework for creating dApps and smart contracts with Solidity. At...

Understanding Ethereum communication tools

Ethereum is a big ecosystem made of several interconnected pieces that talk to each other, which includes smart contracts, dApps, and web apps. The goal is to create separate structures so that your final application is modular in the sense that you can update a specific part without having to recreate the entire dApp. That's why we have communication tools: libraries that help us exchange information between smart contracts, dApps, and web apps. Let's take a look at the different tools we have available right now when it comes to communication.

Frontend Ethereum APIs

When it comes to frontend communication tools, we have some powerful JavaScript libraries that make dApps...

Making sense of the Ethereum infrastructure

When it comes to the base structure of the Ethereum blockchain, there are several applications that help improve it so that people, including developers, can benefit from all of its potential. You see, the blockchain is capable of much more than processing transactions and running smart contracts. You can talk directly with each peer via messages, store information, and use custom clients. In this section, you'll learn about some of the most interesting use cases in Ethereum's infrastructure.

Ethereum clients

You already know that there are some powerful clients with clear differences, but what you probably don't know is that there are specific tools made just for...

Learning Ethereum testing and securing tools

Security in the blockchain is the top priority above any other feature. Without secure applications, we can't begin to work on the simplest of the smart contracts because users won't trust our code. That's why you must learn about all the possibilities when it comes to securing your programs as a master Ethereum developer.

Understanding monitoring utilities

Monitoring is the act of watching how your applications are behaving in the real world. You see, it's important to watch over your code, since it's being used by potentially thousands of users all over the world: you don't want them to have a poor experience at random moments. Be sure to check out...

Getting important open source libraries

When it comes to creating new smart contract applications, you must use all the resources that you have available for creating them in the most time- or cost-efficient manner. Your goal should always be to use and create high quality code. So, why not use some of the most used, tested, and secure libraries for your next project? They have been used hundreds of thousands of times and are still going strong because of their quality. Let's take a look at those powerful open source libraries in the following sections.

ZeppelinOS

Zeppelin has been in the Ethereum game for a long time. They built some of the most useful smart contracts, such as SafeMath for preventing overflowing issues...

Summary

In this chapter, you've gone through many tools that you can use for creating advanced smart contract applications. You started with a guide of the most useful developer tools that you can use in your daily work of smart contract development, including IDEs, development frameworks, and testnets. Then, you continued your learning journey by taking a look at the Ethereum communication tools that help you integrate smart contracts with web applications in an efficient way. After that, you learned more about Ethereum infrastructure utilities that live on the lower levels of the blockchain where they have better access to the different aspects of the Ethereum blockchain.

Next, you went through a crash course on security by learning how important it is to implement auditing tools, monitoring utilities, and testing applications that can provide you with a great overview...