Accounts

Accounts in Ape come from AccountAPI implementations (e.g. from plugins). There are typically two types of accounts:

Test accounts
Live network accounts

Test accounts are useful for local network testing and debugging contracts. Live network accounts are for interacting with live blockchains and should be secured.

To learn more about Ethereum accounts, see the Ethereum documentation.

Test Accounts

Ape ships with pytest fixtures to assist in writing your tests.

Use test accounts in tests

Pre-funded test accounts are accessible via the accounts fixture.

def test_my_contract_method(accounts):
    sender = accounts[0]
    ...

Use test accounts outside of tests

To access the same prefunded accounts in your scripts or console, use the root accounts object and the test_accounts property:

>>> from ape import accounts

>>> sender = accounts.test_accounts[0]

You can configure your test accounts using your ape-config.yaml file:

test:
  mnemonic: test test test test test test test test test test test junk
  number_of_accounts: 5

Warning

NEVER put a seed phrase with real funds here.

The accounts generated from this seed are solely for testing and debugging purposes.

Creating new test accounts

You can create a new test account by doing the following:

>>> from ape import accounts

>>> account = accounts.test_accounts.generate_test_account()

Note

Creating a new test account means it will be unfunded by default.

Learn more about test accounts from the testing guide.

If your testing provider supports this feature, it is possible to directly set the balances of any address by performing the following action:

account.balance += int(1e18)  # Gives `account` 1 Ether

Default Sender Support

In order to eliminate the usage of sender in contract calls, you can use use_sender context manager.

with accounts.use_sender(0): # Use first account from test mnemonic
  contract.myFunction(1)

with accounts.use_sender("<address>"): # Impersonate an account
  contract.myFunction(1)

with accounts.use_sender(a): # a is a `TestAccountAPI` object
  contract.myFunction(1)

Live Network Accounts

When using live networks, you need to get your accounts into Ape. To get your accounts in Ape, you must use an accounts plugin. Ape ships with a keyfile-based account plugin, but you can use any account plugin such as ape-ledger, ape-trezor, or a third-party plugin.

Keyfile Accounts

Ape ships with a keyfile-based account plugin that lets you import and generate accounts. The premise of the plugin is that accounts are stored locally on your computer in the $HOME/.ape/accounts directory following the keyfile structure. Under-the-hood, this structure comes from the eth-keyfile library via the eth-account package. When Ape creates the keyfile, either from import or account-generation (described below!), it prompts you for a passphrase to use for encrypting the keyfile, similarly to how you would use a password in browser-based wallets. The keyfile stores the private key in an encrypted-at-rest state, which maximizes security of the locally-stored key material.

The ape-accounts core plugin lets you use keyfile-based account to sign messages and transactions. When signing a message or transaction using an account from ape-accounts, you will be prompted to enter the passphrase you specified when importing or generating that account.

All the available CLI commands for this account’s plugin can be found here.

Generating New Accounts

You can generate an account:

ape accounts generate <ALIAS>

Ape will prompt you for entropy which is used to increase randomness when creating your account. Ape will then prompt you whether you want to show your mnemonic. If you do not want to see your mnemonic you can select n. Alternatively, you can use the --hide-mnemonic option to skip the prompt.

ape accounts generate <ALIAS> --hide-mnemonic

If you elected to show your mnemonic Ape will then show you your newly generated mnemonic. Ape will then prompt you for a passphrase which you will need to enter twice to confirm. This passphrase is used to encrypt your account on disk, for extra security. You will be prompted for it each time you load your account, so make sure to remember it. After entering the passphrase Ape will then show you your new account address, HDPath, and account alias. If you want to use a custom HDPath, use the --hd-path option:

ape accounts generate <ALIAS> --hd-path <HDPATH>

If you do not use the --hd-path option, Ape will use the default HDPath of (Ethereum network, first account). If you want to use a custom mnemonic phrase word length, use the --word-count option:

ape accounts generate <ALIAS> --word-count <WORDCOUNT>

If you do not use the --word-count option, Ape will use the default word count of 12. You can use all of these together or separately to control the way Ape creates and displays your account information.

This same functionality is also scriptable with the same inputs as the generate command:

from ape_accounts import generate_account

account, mnemonic = generate_account("my-account", "mySecureP@ssphrase")

print(f'Save your mnemonic: {mnemonic}')
print(f'Your new account address is: {account.address}')

See the documentation for generate_account() for more options.

Importing Existing Accounts

If you already have an account and wish to import it into Ape (say, from Metamask), you can use the import command:

ape accounts import <ALIAS>

It will prompt you for the private key. If you need help exporting your private key from Metamask, see this guide. You can also import accounts from mnemonic seed by using the --use-mnemonic flag:

ape accounts import <ALIAS> --use-mnemonic

It will then prompt you for the mnemonic seed. If you need help finding your mnemonic seed (Secret Recovery Phrase) in Metamask, see this guide. In addition, you can also use a custom HDPath by using the --hd-path option:

ape accounts import <ALIAS> --use-mnemonic --hd-path <HDPATH>

If you use the --hd-path option, you will need to pass the HDPath you’d like to use as an argument in the command. If you do not use the --hd-path option, Ape will use the default HDPath of (Ethereum network, first account).

You can import an account programmatically using a seed phrase using import_account_from_mnemonic():

from ape_accounts import import_account_from_mnemonic

alias = "my-account"
passphrase = "my$ecurePassphrase"
mnemonic = "test test test test test test test test test test test junk"

account = import_account_from_mnemonic(alias, passphrase, mnemonic)

print(f'Your imported account address is: {account.address}')

Or using a raw private key using import_account_from_private_key():

import os
from ape_accounts import import_account_from_private_key

alias = "my-account"
passphrase = "my SecurePassphrase"
private_key = os.urandom(32).hex()

account = import_account_from_private_key(alias, passphrase, private_key)

print(f'Your imported account address is: {account.address}')

Exporting Accounts

You can also export the private key of an account:

ape accounts export <ALIAS>

Ape will ask you for the password to the account and then give you the private key of that account. You can then use that private key with import. You can alternatively load the private key into Metamask wallet. Then, in your scripts, you can load an account:

from ape import accounts

account = accounts.load("<ALIAS>")

Default Sender Support

In order to reduce repetition of adding sender in your contract calls, you can use use_sender context manager.

with accounts.use_sender(0):
  contract.myFunction(1)

with accounts.use_sender("<address>"):
  contract.myFunction(1)

with accounts.use_sender("<alias>"):
  contract.myFunction(1)

with accounts.use_sender(a): # a is a `AccountAPI` object
  contract.myFunction(1)

Signing Messages

You can sign messages with your accounts in Ape. To do this, use the sign_message API.

from ape import accounts
from eth_account.messages import encode_defunct

account = accounts.load("<ALIAS>")
message = encode_defunct(text="Hello Apes!")
signature = account.sign_message(message)

Note

Ape’s sign_message API intentionally accepts Any as the message argument type.

Account plugins decide what data-types to support. Most Ethereum account plugins, such as ape-account, are able to sign messages like the example above. However, you can also provide other types, such as a str directly:

from ape import accounts

account = accounts.load("<ALIAS>")
signature = account.sign_message("Hello Apes!")

EIP-712

Some account plugins are able to sign EIP-712 structured message types by utilizing the eip712 package. Here is an example with custom EIP-712 classes:

from ape import accounts
from eip712.messages import EIP712Message, EIP712Type

class Person(EIP712Type):
    name: "string"
    wallet: "address"

class Mail(EIP712Message):
    _chainId_: "uint256" = 1
    _name_: "string" = "Ether Mail"
    _verifyingContract_: "address" = "0xCcCCccccCCCCcCCCCCCcCcCccCcCCCcCcccccccC"
    _version_: "string" = "1"

    sender: Person
    receiver: Person

alice = Person(name="Alice", wallet="0xCD2a3d9F938E13CD947Ec05AbC7FE734Df8DD826")
bob = Person("Bob", "0xB0B0b0b0b0b0B000000000000000000000000000")
message = Mail(sender=alice, receiver=bob)

account = accounts.load("<ALIAS>")
account.sign_message(message)

Verifying Signature

Verify the signatures on your signed messages by using the recover_signer function or the check_signature function:

from ape import accounts
from ape.types.signatures import recover_signer
from eth_account.messages import encode_defunct

account = accounts.load("<ALIAS>")
message = encode_defunct(text="Hello Apes!")
signature = account.sign_message(message)

# Validate the signature by recovering the signer and asserting it is equal to the sender.
recovered_signer = recover_signer(message, signature)
assert recovered_signer == account.address

# NOTE: You can also use the `check_signature` method on an account, which returns a bool.
assert account.check_signature(message, signature)

Automation

If you use your keyfile accounts in automation, such as CI/CD, you may need to programmatically unlock them and enable auto-sign. To do this, use a special environment variable for the account’s passphrase:

export APE_ACCOUNTS_<alias>_PASSPHRASE="a"

Where <alias> is the name of the account you want to use. Now, you can use your account to make any transactions without subsequently providing your passphrase.

from ape import accounts
from eth_account.messages import encode_defunct

account = accounts.load("<ALIAS>")
account.set_autosign(True)

# Now, you will not be prompted to sign messages or transactions
message = encode_defunct(text="Hello Apes!")
signature = account.sign_message(message)

Note

Alternatively, you may use the passphrase= kwarg on methods account.set_autosign() and account.unlock(), but we highly recommend using the environment variable approach to avoid accidentally leaking your passphrase.

Hardware Wallets

Because of the plugin system in Ape, we are able to support other types of accounts including hardware wallet accounts. Check out these plugins:

To install one of these plugins, do the following:

ape plugins install ledger