`global LatestTimestamp` is 0 in when debugging from dryrun txn

General
1

I’m debugging a contract and the global LatestTimestamp instruction is putting 0 on the stack. Does anyone know a reason for this? I’m running against a private node

2

Just a guess : maybe that’s a limitation of dryrun, and it would work cirrectly on mainnet ?

3

Does that mean there’s no way to debug timestamp-related logic?

1 Like
4

“No way to debug” is a pretty strong statement.
Don’t you think so ?
How’s about sending transactions to testnet, and examining the blocks, or even better - using local private network, or a sandbox ?

5

That is not a replacement for debugging. I am already using a private sandbox. If I am using tealdbg to debug my contract, and some of that relies on checking that global LatestTimestamp is greater or less than a stored unix timestamp value, I have to comment it out to get the code following it to execute

Edit: I should be more specific. I meant debugging using tealdbg, which is the most efficient way to debug during development

6

@casper , yes I know that the tealdbg is a great tool for debugging. I just wanted to make sure you’re aware of other means to verify the correctness of your smart contract.

Would it be better if it was “just working” ? Probably.

I think that what you’re after is not a dryrun debugger ( tealdbg ) which works “detached” from the blockchain, but rather a “live” debugger. Note that live debuggers are less intuitive since repeated execution could execute diffrently.

7

Thanks @tsachi. I had hoped that the global LatestTimestamp would be available, taken as a snapshot at the time of the dryrun txn

8

I have discovered you can set a latestTimestamp field on the JavaScript SDK’s createDryRun method. This seems to do the trick.

(the below uses the getUnixTime function from the date-fns library)

  const dryRun = await algosdk.createDryrun({
    client: algodClient,
    txns,
    latestTimestamp: getUnixTime(new Date()),
  });
1 Like
9

Is there another way to get/set latest timestamp in sandbox node? For example the last marked solution using dryRun give me the possibility with a certain functionality, but if I’m configuring a test cases in beaker for example, it comes to fail in the next validations.

10

Welcome to Algorand !

After discussing with the team, it looks like the best options right now are:

  • use dryRun if you can
  • otherwise, replace the timestamp check logic by some logic that does not have that issue for testing, or design it to work with with sandbox