Better error message when calling `BaseProvider.request()` without `params`?

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
api

Research direction

Start in src/BaseProvider.ts at the BaseProvider.request method linked in the issue, and reproduce the two window.ethereum.request examples to compare omitted params with params: []. Trace where the undefined length error is produced. Done means the no-params call has intentional, user-facing behavior rather than the confusing TypeError, with the chosen behavior reflected in coverage.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Environment:
Brave browser with MetaMask v9.8.4 extension installed. Running code in console

The following fails with a confusing error: MetaMask - RPC Error: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined 

window.ethereum
  .request({
    method: "eth_blockNumber",
  })

However, this succeeds:

window.ethereum
  .request({
    method: "eth_blockNumber",
    params: [],
  })

Some methods like ethereum.request({ method: "eth_requestAccounts" }) don't require params to be set, so I spent an embarrassing of time trying to find out why one call worked and the other didn't.

Context:

I was trying to figure out why a convenience library was failing and figured that going down a level down to the RPC level might help. I tried the most basic RPC request I could think of (getting block number) when I got this error.

Possible solutions:

  1. One solution might be for the MetaMask to add params: [] when no params are specified.
  2. Another solution might be to add some more error checking to the BaseProvider request method?
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
268
Forks
130
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