What is a contract in Solidity?
Overview
A Solidity contract is a block of code that contains functions and state variables. It is stored on a specific address on the Ethereum blockchain.
Creating a contract
Every Solidity code starts with the pragma version. The pragmaversion specifies the version of the compiler that the code should use.
pragma solidity ^0.5.0;
Pragma version declaration
To create a contract, we use the contract keyword followed by the contract name. Inside the {} brackets, we create the variables and functions.
Syntax
contract contractName {// code}
Syntax of a contract
Example
Let’s see how to create a contract in Solidity.
// declare pragma versionpragma solidity ^0.5.0;// create contractcontract Example {// create state variablestring str = "Edpresso";// create functionfunction getStr() public view returns(string memory) {return str;}}
Explanation
- Line 2: We declare the pragma version
^0.5.0. - Line 5: We create a
contractnamedExample. - Line 7: We declared a state variable
str. - Line 10: We define a function
getStr()that returns the value ofstr.