Configure Ape

You can configure Ape using configuration files with the name ape-config.yaml. There are two locations you can place an ape-config.yaml file.

  1. In the root of your project

  2. In your $HOME/.ape directory (global)

Project settings take precedent, but global settings allow you to configure preferences across all projects, such as your default mainnet provider (e.g. Alchemy versus running your own node).

This guide serves as an index of the settings you can include in any ape-config.yaml file. This guide is PURPOSELY alphabetized to facilitate easier look-up of keys.

Most of the features in this guide are documented more-fully elsewhere in the user-guides.

However, here is a list of common-use cases requiring the ape-config.yaml file to help you:

  1. Setting up a custom node RPC: See the geth section.

  2. Setting up project dependencies: See the dependencies section.

  3. Declaring your project’s plugins: See the plugins section.

Contracts Folder

Specify a different path to your contracts/ directory. This is useful when using a different naming convention, such as src/ rather than contracts/.

contracts_folder: src

You can also use an absolute path. This is useful for projects that compile contracts outside their directory.

contracts_folder: "~/GlobalContracts"

Default Ecosystem

You can change the default ecosystem by including the following:

default_ecosystem: fantom

The default ecosystem is ethereum.

Dependencies

Configure dependencies for your ape project. To learn more about dependencies, see this guide.

A simple example of configuring dependencies looks like this:

dependencies:
  - name: OpenZeppelin
    github: OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts
    version: 4.4.2

Deployments

Set deployments that were made outside of Ape in your ape-config.yaml to create past-deployment-based contract instances in Ape: (See this example for more information on this feature).

Config example:

deployments:
  ethereum:
    mainnet:
      - contract_type: MyContract
        address: 0x5FbDB2315678afecb367f032d93F642f64180aa3
    goerli:
      - contract_type: MyContract
        address: 0xe7f1725E7734CE288F8367e1Bb143E90bb3F0512

When connected to Ethereum mainnet, reference the deployment by doing:

from ape import project

contract = project.MyContract.deployments[0]

NOTE: Ape does not add or edit deployments in your ape-config.yaml file.

Geth

When using the geth provider, you can customize its settings. For example, to change the URI for an Ethereum network, do:

geth:
  ethereum:
    mainnet:
      uri: http://localhost:5030

Now, the ape-geth core plugin will use the URL http://localhost:5030 to connect and make requests.

WARN: Instead of using ape-geth to connect to an Infura or Alchemy node, use the ape-infura or ape-alchemy provider plugins instead, which have their own way of managing API keys via environment variables.

For more information on networking as a whole, see this guide.

Networks

Set default network and network providers:

ethereum:
  default_network: mainnet-fork
  mainnet_fork:
    default_provider: hardhat

Set the gas limit for a given network:

ethereum:
  default_network: mainnet-fork
  mainnet_fork:
    gas_limit: max

You may use one of:

  • "auto" - gas limit is estimated for each transaction

  • "max" - the maximum block gas limit is used

  • A number or numeric string, base 10 or 16 (e.g. 1234, "1234", 0x1234, "0x1234")

  • An object with key "auto" for specifying an estimate-multiplier for transaction insurance

To use the auto-multiplier, make your config like this:

ethereum:
  mainnet:
    gas_limit:
      auto:
        multiplier: 1.2  # Multiply 1.2 times the result of eth_estimateGas

For the local network configuration, the default is "max". Otherwise, it is "auto".

Plugins

Set which ape plugins you want to always use.

NOTE: The ape- prefix is not needed and shouldn’t be included here.

plugins:
  - name: solidity # ape-solidity plugin
    version: 0.1.0b2
  - name: ens

Install these plugins by running command:

ape plugins install .

Testing

Configure your test accounts:

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