Web3 – How to Correctly Add WEI and ETH Values

blockchaingo-ethereumsoliditytruffleweb3js

I'm working on an auction feature in my DApp and having problems correctly adding together two WEI values.

The contract stores two important values:
1. A minBidIncrement variable – which I've set to 0.1 ETH, and
2. A highestBidAmount variable – which stores the highest bid anyone has made to date.

Thus, if the last highest bid was say 2.5 ETH, I want to make sure the next allowable bid would be at least that plus the minBidIncrement, meaning it should be:

2.5 ETH + 0.1 ETH which equals 2.6 ETH.

Its pretty straight forward stuff.

So I'm doing this:

    let minNextBid = highestBidAmount + minBidIncrement;

but what I get from that is some crazy huge value which causes my Dapp to freak out and Metamask to give me errors.

Here's what's happening underneath the hood:
–highestBidAmount comes back as 100000000000000000
–minBidIncrement also comes back as 100000000000000000

(both of those are fine cause they're 18 decimal places, which means they're really 0.1 ETH)

So next when I set my minNextBid, I'm basically doing 100000000000000000 + 100000000000000000, but that yields: 100000000000000000100000000000000000

And when I then convert that to ETH, I get this value: 100000000000000000.1

which isn't at all what I was expecting to get. What I was expecting to get was 0.2 ETH, but I get that astronomical value instead.

So what's happening here? What am I doing wrong?
What's the right way to do this?

Best Answer

You are concatenating strings in JavaScript.

Here is what happens:

var test = "he";
var test2 = "llo";
console.log(test+test2);

OUTPUTS: hello. You are using integers as strings.

Therefore you need to convert your variables to int before adding them.

Here is an example:

highestBidAmount = parseInt(highestBidAmount, 10);

Sidenote: Don't change the 10 it has nothing to do with decimal places. It's the radix used.

Do that with both variables:

minBidIncrement = parseInt(minBidIncrement, 10);

Now add them:

let minNextBid = highestBidAmount + minBidIncrement;

Now you are adding integers so it results in: 200000000000000000

Related Topic