Resolve Unstoppable Domains With Direct Blockchain Calls Guide

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The .zil namespace is located on a separate chain and requires a different process.

In this tutorial, we will look at resolving Unstoppable Domains, using nothing but HTML, JavaScript, and the ethers.js library. Each domain can be resolved in exactly the same manner as the examples shown below.

Dynamic GIF showing the steps to resolve an Unstoppable domain (.crypto, .wallet, .dao, etc.)

To resolve an unstoppable domain, we will need to

Tokenize the domain
Configure Ethers.js library
Make a call and fetch the data

Let’s visualize the resolution process using some of the simplest tools a web developer has: knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.

Initialize the Project Folder

The first thing we need to do is create a folder with three files inside: index.html, index.js, and ethers.js.

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$ mkdir crypto-resolution
$ cd crypto-resolution
$ touch index.html index.js ethers.js

Your project folder should look exactly like the following:

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.
├── index.html
├── index.js
├── ethers.js

Build the Layout: `index.html`

Let’s open the index.html file and build out the layout for our app. To create a positive UI experience for the user, we’ll need to build an input bar, a button to trigger the resolution, and a <div> to display our records.

Next, we’ll need to connect js-sha3 (so that we can use the keccak_256 hash function) and ethers.js to communicate with the blockchain contract.

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We will need the keccak_256 hash function to calculate ERC-721 token ID for the unstoppable domain. To see a full description of this process, read our Namehashing guide.

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8">
        <title>Basic .crypto integration</title>
    </head>
    <body>
      <div id="main" style="
      display: flex;
      flex-direction: column;
      height: 100vh;"
      >

        <input id="input" />
        <button onclick="resolve()">Resolve</button>
        <div id="records" style="display: flex; flex-direction: column;">

        </div>
      </div>

      <!-- This exposes keccak_256 hash function -->
      <script
        src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/js-sha3/0.8.0/sha3.min.js"
        integrity="sha512-PmGDkK2UHGzTUfkFGcJ8YSrD/swUXekcca+1wWlrwALIZho9JX+3ddaaI9wmmf8PmgDIpMtx6TU8YBJAZS0mPQ=="
        crossorigin="anonymous">
      </script>

      <!-- This exposes the ethers.js library as a global variable: ethers -->
      <script src="https://cdn.ethers.io/lib/ethers-5.0.umd.min.js"
        type="application/javascript"></script>

      <!-- This are our custom files -->
      <script src="ethers.js"></script>
      <script src="index.js"></script>
    </body>
</html>

Add Some JavaScript: `index.js`

Now that we have our index.html file set up, let’s add some JavaScript. We can start by inputting some basic code into our index.js file to capture the text from the input field and print it onto our console.

The code snippet below shows the resolve function:

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async function resolve() {
  const userInput = document.getElementById("input").value;
  console.log({ domain: userInput });
}

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We can open index.html in a browser to make sure everything is connected and launches.

Tokenize Your Domain by Namehashing

Namehashing is an algorithm that tokenizes your domain name in a way that the .crypto smart contract can understand.

To tokenize our domain, we’ll need to split the domain name by the "." character into separate labels, reverse the array, and reduce it to a single hash. We can do this by implementing a recursive hash function.

We’ll also want to implement an arrayToHex() function to get the result as a string, as well as a wrapper function namehash().

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function namehash(name) {
  const hashArray = hash(name);
  return arrayToHex(hashArray);
}
function hash(name) {
  if (!name) {
      return new Uint8Array(32);
  }
  const [label, ...remainder] = name.split('.');
  const labelHash = keccak_256.array(label);
  const remainderHash = hash(remainder.join('.'));
  return keccak_256.array(new Uint8Array([...remainderHash, ...labelHash]));
}
function arrayToHex(arr) {
  return '0x' + Array.prototype.map.call(arr, x => ('00' + x.toString(16)).slice(-2)).join('');
}

This table shows a list of Namehash examples with different inputs:

Label	Namehash
""	`0x88d4843af302c2093286898cd34cba7a471c3cdce4c78514fc971c3c6a53891e`
crypto	`0x0f4a10a4f46c388cea365fcf45cccf0e9d901b945b9829ccdb54c10dc3cb7a6f`
brad.crypto	`0x756e4e998dbffd803c21d23b06cd855cdc7a4b57706c95964a37e24b47c10fc9`

Configure the Ethers.js Library

To talk with any blockchain contract using ethers.js, we need to know the following:

Ethereum contract address
Polygon contract address
Contract ABI
Ethereum provider
Polygon provider

Let’s add the following information to our ethers.js file:

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var ethAddress = '0x299974AeD8911bcbd2C61262605b89F591a53E83';
var polygonAddress = '0x332A8191905fA8E6eeA7350B5799F225B8ed30a9';

var abi = [
  {
    constant: true,
    inputs: [
      {
        internalType: 'string[]',
        name: 'keys',
        type: 'string[]',
      },
      {
        internalType: 'uint256',
        name: 'tokenId',
        type: 'uint256',
      },
    ],
    name: 'getData',
    outputs: [
      {
        internalType: 'address',
        name: 'resolver',
        type: 'address',
      },
      {
        internalType: 'address',
        name: 'owner',
        type: 'address',
      },
      {
        internalType: 'string[]',
        name: 'values',
        type: 'string[]',
      },
    ],
    payable: false,
    stateMutability: 'view',
    type: 'function',
  }
];
var polygonProvider = new ethers.providers.JsonRpcProvider("https://polygon-mumbai.g.alchemy.com/v2/demo");
var provider = new ethers.providers.JsonRpcProvider("https://eth-goerli.alchemyapi.io/v2/demo");

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The network and contract addresses are from goerli and polygon mumbai test networks respectively. For mainnet, use the following contract addresses: 0xc3C2BAB5e3e52DBF311b2aAcEf2e40344f19494E (Ethereum) and 0xA3f32c8cd786dc089Bd1fC175F2707223aeE5d00 (Polygon). Be sure to set the network to mainnet instead of goerli.

For the scope of this project, we will only need to use the getData() function from the CNS Smart Contract.

Create a Contract Instance

Next, we’ll need to create a contract instance and create a function to query our contract.

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var ethContract = new ethers.Contract(ethAddress, abi, provider);
var polygonContract = new ethers.Contract(polygonAddress, abi, polygonProvider);

async function fetchContractData(contract, keys, tokenId) {
 return contract.getData(keys, tokenId);
}

By inspecting the contract’s getData function interface, we can see that it requires from us an array of keys and a tokenId. We can get the tokenId by calling the namehash() function from above.

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Although any string can be stored as a key under the domain, Unstoppable Domains has standardized the keys across many applications.

Record Keys Lookup

The following table shows record keys and a description for each:

Key	Description
crypto.BTC.address	BTC address attached to the domain
crypto.ETH.address	ETH address attached to the domain

Make the Call to the Contract

Let’s update our resolve() function to use the namehash and then look up the desired record keys from the input domain name. We’ll then want to print the result in the console to inspect it further.

First, we will query the polygon network and check the ownership. If there is no owner for a domain on Polygon network, we need to query the Ethereum network.

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async function resolveEthNetwork(tokenId, interestedKeys) {
 fetchContractData(ethContract, interestedKeys, tokenId).then(data => {
   console.log({
     ownerAddress: data.owner,
     resolverAddress: data.resolver,
     records: data[2]
   });
 });
}

async function resolveBothChains(tokenId, interestedKeys) {
 // try to resolve the polygon network first
 fetchContractData(polygonContract, interestedKeys, tokenId).then(data => {
   if (isEmpty(data.owner)) {
     // if no owner for domain found on polygon network look up the eth network
     return resolveEthNetwork(tokenId, interestedKeys);
   }

   // proceed with polygon results
   console.log({
     ownerAddress: data.owner,
     resolverAddress: data.resolver,
     records: data[2]
   });

 });
}

async function resolve() {
  const userInput = document.getElementById("input").value;
  const tokenId = namehash(userInput);

  const interestedKeys = [
    "crypto.BTC.address",
    "crypto.ETH.address",
  ];

  resolveBothChains(tokenId, interestedKeys);
}

If we try to resolve the brad.crypto domain with the above keys, we should see the following parsed result from fetchContractData() function:

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{
  "ownerAddress": "0x8aaD44321A86b170879d7A244c1e8d360c99DdA8",
  "resolverAddress": "0xb66DcE2DA6afAAa98F2013446dBCB0f4B0ab2842",
  "records":[
    "bc1q359khn0phg58xgezyqsuuaha28zkwx047c0c3y",
    "0x8aaD44321A86b170879d7A244c1e8d360c99DdA8"
    ]
}

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data[2] is an array containing all resolved records in the same order in which they were queried. In this case, the first argument is a BTC address and the last one is an ETH address attached to the domain.

Display the Records

Since this is a simple example, we won’t get too fancy. We’ll just create a <span> element for each record containing its key and value, its owner address, and its resolver address. We’ll also want to set the font to red if the record is not found.

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function cleanDOM(parent) {
  while (parent.firstChild) {
    parent.removeChild(parent.firstChild);
  }
}
function displayResolution(resolution) {
  const {ownerAddress, resolverAddress, records} = resolution;
  const mainContainer = document.getElementById('records');
  cleanDOM(mainContainer);
  const ownerRecord = document.createElement('span');
  ownerRecord.innerHTML = `ownerAddress: ${ownerAddress}`;
  const resolverRecord = document.createElement('span');
  resolverRecord.innerHTML = `resolverAddress: ${resolverAddress}`;
  mainContainer.appendChild(ownerRecord);
  mainContainer.appendChild(resolverRecord);
  Object.entries(records).map(([key, value]) => {
    const recordSpan = document.createElement('span');
    if (!value) {
      recordSpan.style.color = 'red';
      value = `No ${key} found`;
    }
    recordSpan.innerHTML = `${key} : ${value}`;
    mainContainer.appendChild(recordSpan);
  });
}

Before we test it out, let’s make our lives a little easier by implementing a function to combine keys and results into one object.

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function combineKeysWithRecords(keys, records) {
  const combined = {};
  keys.map((key, index) => {
    combined[key] = records[index];
  });
  return combined;
}

Now we can easily show the records on our page:

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async function resolveEthNetwork(tokenId, interestedKeys) {
 fetchContractData(ethContract, interestedKeys, tokenId).then(data => {
   displayResolution({
     ownerAddress: data.owner,
     resolverAddress: data.resolver,
     records: combineKeysWithRecords(interestedKeys, data[2])
   });
 });
}

async function resolveBothChains(tokenId, interestedKeys) {
 // try to resolve the polygon network first
 fetchContractData(polygonContract, interestedKeys, tokenId).then(data => {
   if (isEmpty(data.owner)) {
     // if no owner for domain found on polygon look up the eth network
     return resolveEthNetwork(tokenId, interestedKeys);
   }

   displayResolution({
     ownerAddress: data.owner,
     resolverAddress: data.resolver,
     records: combineKeysWithRecords(interestedKeys, data[2])
   });
 });
}

If we are successful, we should see the following on our page:

Set-up Error Notifications

Now that we've made a successful call, let’s deal with all possible errors that might come up during the resolution.

To do this, we’ll want to create a function to print an error in our records <div>. We’ll also want to add a boolean argument cleanDom to remove everything from the records <div> before we place an error for display.

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function displayError(message, cleanDom) {
  const mainContainer = document.getElementById('records');
  if (cleanDom) {
    cleanDOM(mainContainer);
  }
  const error = document.createElement('p');
  error.style.color = "red";
  error.innerHTML = message;
  mainContainer.appendChild(error);
  return ;
}

We can easily identify the possible errors by playing around with the app in its current state. The following table lists the possible errors and their descriptions.

Errors	Description
Domain is not registered	Owner address is `0x00000000000000000000000000000000`
Domain is not configured	It is possible that owner address exists but resolver address is set to `0x00000000000000000000000000000000`
Record is not found	Records are queried for an address (e.g. crypto.BTC.address) but the domain owner hasn't set up the records yet

Once we’ve identified the errors, we will need to update the callback to the fetchContractData() function to show the errors to the user:

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function isEmpty(msg) {
 return !msg || msg === '0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000';
}

async function resolveEthNetwork(tokenId, interestedKeys) {
 fetchContractData(ethContract, interestedKeys, tokenId).then(data => {
   if (isEmpty(data.owner)) {
     displayError('Domain is not registered', true);
     return;
   }

   if (isEmpty(data.resolver)) {
     displayError('Domain is not configured', true);
     return ;
   }

   displayResolution({
     ownerAddress: data.owner,
     resolverAddress: data.resolver,
     records: combineKeysWithRecords(interestedKeys, data[2])
   });
 });
}

async function resolveBothChains(tokenId, interestedKeys) {
 // try to resolve the polygon network first
 fetchContractData(polygonContract, interestedKeys, tokenId).then(data => {
   if (isEmpty(data.owner)) {
     // if no owner for domain found on polygon look up the eth network
     return resolveEthNetwork(tokenId, interestedKeys);
   }

   if (isEmpty(data.resolver)) {
     displayError('Domain is not configured', true);
     return ;
   }

   displayResolution({
     ownerAddress: data.owner,
     resolverAddress: data.resolver,
     records: combineKeysWithRecords(interestedKeys, data[2])
   });
 });
}

Now you can resolve any .crypto domain and display the appropriate error message to your users. Just open the index.html file in your browser and play around with the results to get a better sense of the errors that may come up and the error messages you might want to include.

For example, you can try to resolve the following domains:

Domain	Result
`homecakes.crypto`	Domain has no BTC record
`udtestdev-test.crypto`	Resolves without any issues
`ryan.crypto`	Domain has no BTC record

Resolve Unstoppable Domains With Direct Blockchain Calls Guide

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Initialize the Project Folder

Build the Layout: index.html

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Add Some JavaScript: index.js

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Tokenize Your Domain by Namehashing

Configure the Ethers.js Library

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Create a Contract Instance

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Record Keys Lookup

Make the Call to the Contract

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Display the Records

Set-up Error Notifications

Resources

Build the Layout: `index.html`

Add Some JavaScript: `index.js`