require ethers or require hardhat

[Sairam002]

Hi all,
I came across lesson-6 and I saw syntax differ for creating a ContractFactory in lesson-5 and lesson-6 .I searched in ethers.js documentation but can't find anywhere about getContractFactory().

Is there any other syntax for creating a ContractFactory in hardhat???
One thing I noticed is In both the lesson's is we are importing ethers

For lesson-5 :-

const {ethers} = require("ethers");

For lesson-6 :-

const {ethers} = require("hardhat");

@PatrickAlphaC can you please help me clearing my doubt??

[PatrickAlphaC]

Amazing question!

So... in lesson 5 we just used the "raw" ethers package. But the "ethers" package by itself doesn't have all the functionality we want for it!

However, you'll notice in our package.json we have this dependency:

"@nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers": "^2.0.4",

(it could be a different number other than ^2.0.4 depending on when you read this...

This package wraps the ethers package inside the hardhat package to give it extra functionality!

So while in hardhat, we want to use the hardhat wrapped edition of ethers! This is where those extra functions like getContractFactory come from!

That's why we use:

const {ethers} = require("hardhat");

[Sairam002]

Are there any other functions like getContractFactory who's syntax are modified when rapped in hardhat??

[PatrickAlphaC]

Yes, a ton.

We work with getContract a lot, which comes from the hardhat-deploy plugin in (in later lessons)

[Sairam002]

Can I know what is the difference between getContract and getContractFactory. And when should we use getContract and getContractFactory??

[PatrickAlphaC]

getContractFactory: Returns an object that can deploy contracts.
getContract: Returns the contract.

If you want the contract, use getContract if you want to deploy a contract, use getContractFactory. However, with the hardhat-deploy plugin, we just use the deploy function instead, so you might not use getContractFactory.