The Cairo compiler knows that a program is a contract if it has %lang starknet at the top.

In Cairo, each number is a felt (field element -> “F EL T”). This is an interesting topic to explore. In practice, field elements behave like integers inside StarkNet contracts.

%lang starknet
%builtins range_check

# Alphabet substitution cipher for each letter.
# a = 01, b = 02, etc.
const hello = 10000805121215  # 08, 05, 12, 12, 15.
const world = 10002315181204  # 23, 15, 18, 12, 04.

@view
func greeting() -> (number_1 : felt, number_2 : felt):
    return (hello, world)
end

Things of note

  • The range_check is a component that Cairo uses to make sure numbers stay within a certain range.
  • The @view decorator exposes the greeting function for reading.
  • The function accepts no inputs
  • The function returns two outputs.
  • The two outputs have the type felt.
  • All functions must have a return and an end

Save as contracts/hello_world.cairo

Compile

Compile

nile compile

Or compile this specific contract

nile compile contracts/hello_world.cairo

Test

Make a new file called test_hello_world.py and populate it:

import pytest
import asyncio
from starkware.starknet.testing.starknet import Starknet

# Enables modules.
@pytest.fixture(scope='module')
def event_loop():
    return asyncio.new_event_loop()

# Reusable to save testing time.
@pytest.fixture(scope='module')
async def contract_factory():
    starknet = await Starknet.empty()
    contract = await starknet.deploy("contracts/hello_world.cairo")
    return starknet, contract

@pytest.mark.asyncio
async def test_contract(contract_factory):
    starknet, contract = contract_factory

    # Read from contract
    response = await contract.greeting().call()
    assert response.result == (
        10000805121215,
        10002315181204)

Run the test

pytest test_hello_world.py

Local Deployment

Deploy to the local devnet.

nile deploy hello_world --alias hello_world

Interact

Read-only

nile call hello_world greeting

Returns the two hexadecimal numbers:

0x9187e6fccbf 0x918d8717c94

Which when converted to decimal using python are confirmed:

>>> int('0x9187e6fccbf', 16)
10000805121215

Public deployment

Will default to the Goerli/alpha testnet until mainnet is available.

nile deploy hello_world --alias hello_world --network mainnet

Returns:

🚀 Deploying hello_world
🌕 artifacts/hello_world.json successfully deployed to 0x01ecf2883c6e8b130e4c092d46e7c36db3fe38364e885d7110a9acb6172b6235
📦 Registering deployment as hello_world in mainnet.deployments.txt

Deployments can be viewed in the voyager explorer https://voyager.online