Class State Management in Smart Contracts: How to Handle Inheritance and Updates?
I've tried everything I can think of but I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple... Currently developing a decentralized application where smart contracts manage user states and roles. I'm leveraging Solidity 0.8.x and trying to implement inheritance for a base contract that defines common state variables and mappings. The intention is to allow child contracts to extend this base contract while managing user state effectively. Here’s the rough structure of what I’ve implemented so far: ```solidity pragma solidity ^0.8.0; contract BaseContract { mapping(address => uint) public userRoles; event RoleUpdated(address indexed user, uint newRole); function setUserRole(address user, uint role) internal { userRoles[user] = role; emit RoleUpdated(user, role); } } contract ChildContract is BaseContract { function updateRole(address user, uint role) external { // Only allow role updates from authorized addresses require(msg.sender == address(this), "Not authorized"); setUserRole(user, role); } } ``` The problem arises when I try to deploy this in my staging environment. It seems the `setUserRole` function isn’t being invoked properly from the `ChildContract`. I suspect it’s related to access control, as the requirement to call `setUserRole` internally means that I’ve placed some restrictions on which functions can access it. I also tried using different visibility keywords. Changing `internal` to `public` in `setUserRole` seemed to allow for function access during testing, yet I’m worried about exposing state-changing functions to external calls. Is there a design pattern or best practice I should follow here to secure my state while still allowing child contracts to update roles? Additionally, is there any common approach to handle state updates across multiple child contracts, considering that my goal is to maintain clarity and prevent any unintentional overrides? Any insights or alternative strategies would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is macOS. Is there a simpler solution I'm overlooking? For context: I'm using Solidity on macOS. Am I missing something obvious?