Note
For a comprehensive coverage of blockchain development in Ethereum or mastering Solidity programming, taking our below self paced courses is highly recommended:
- Blockchain Solidity Course for Beginners
- Ethereum Developer Course
- Blockchain Security Course for Beginners
Recap
In our previous series, we cover the following 12 articles:
- Review of challenges in distributed systems
- Review of Cap Theorem in Distributed Systems
- Horizontal Scaling versus Vertical Scaling in Distributed Systems
- How to Scale up Ethereum Blockchain Applications
- Review of scaling solutions for Ethereum
- How to Manage Ethereum State Channel with Raiden
- How Plasma Chains Work in Ethereum
- How Sharding and Gasper work in Ethereum
- How Proof-of-Stack Consensus Works in Ethereum
- A roadmap for Implementing Ethereum 2.0
- How to work with Decentralized Data and Content Storage in Ethereum
- How Decentralized Messaging with Whisper Works in Ethereum
In this article, we review one of popular Ethereum development tools called Infura which provides a collection of full node interfaces that allow the client application to access the Ethereum network.
In this and next article series, we will explore the popular tools and frameworks that you come across frequently while starting to learn Ethereum. This will help you get a grasp on the big picture of the Ethereum ecosystem and apply this knowledge to Ethereum project development. The topics that we will cover in this series are as follows:
- Understanding the Ethereum development tools and framework
- The Ethereum client API
- Ethereum storage
- Ethereum messaging – Whisper
- Popular smart contract libraries
Understanding the Ethereum development tools and frameworks
For the DApp software development life cycle, efficient use of the popular tools, frameworks, and libraries can help reduce the time from prototype to production and reduce the risk of the smart contract. Since more people are using and testing these tools, they tend to be more stable.
There are many different Ethereum development tools and frameworks the market today, all of which represent different standards. Here are some of the most popular tools and frameworks:
- Truffle
- Embark Infura
- DApp Waffle
In our other tutorial series, Smart Contract Development and Test Fundamentals, we discussed the Truffle tool. In this article, we will review one of the popular tools listed here—Infura. For other tools, please visit their official websites to learn more.
Working with Infura
Infura provides a collection of full node interfaces that allow the client application to access the Ethereum network in a scalable, secure, and reliable way. ConsenSys provides Infura service to maintain these Ethereum and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) nodes.
Developers don’t need to worry about the complexity of running these Ethereum and IPFS nodes. MetaMask uses Infura as the Ethereum provider to connect to the Ethereum blockchain. The following diagram shows the technical architecture of how a web client connects with IPFS and the Ethereum node through Infura:
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To start working with the Infura service, you need to sign up for an account from the Infura website: https://infura.io/register. At the time of writing, the latest available version is Infura V3.
Once you’ve signed up, you can create a project to start your DApp development. The website will provide you with an access token to connect to the relevant Ethereum network. After creating a project, you should see the following page:
Infura provides links for various environments, including the main Ethereum network and other popular test networks. These environments are listed in the following table:
| Env | Link |
| Main Ethereum Network | https://mainnet.infura.io/v3/YOUR-PROJECT-ID |
| Rinkeby Test Ethereum Network | https://rinkeby.infura.io/v3/YOUR-PROJECT-ID |
| Ropsten Test Ethereum Network | https://ropsten.infura.io/v3/YOUR-PROJECT-ID |
| Görli Test Ethereum Network | https://goerli.infura.io/v3/YOUR-PROJECT-ID |
| IPFS Gateway | https://ipfs.infura.io/ipfs/ |
Next, let’s explore Infura’s Ethereum API.
Next Article
In our next article (Review of Infura Ethereum API), we discuss how Infura Ethereum API works.
This article is written in collaboration with Brian Wu who is a leading author of “Learn Ethereum: Build your own decentralized applications with Ethereum and smart contracts” book. He has written 7 books on blockchain development.
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