3. Adding metadata and payments to your contract

Now that we can mint NFTs from our contract using our script, we can bring our NFT collection to life by adding rich metadata (such as images and traits) to each minted token.

📘
Section Prerequisites
This section assumes you already followed Steps 1 and 2 of this tutorial, so make sure to go back to the previous steps of this tutorial and follow along to set up and deploy your own NFT contract.

Intro to NFT Metadata

Providing NFTs with metadata allows applications like OpenSea to pull in rich data for digital items and easily display them. Metadata allows these assets to have additional properties, such as a name, description, an image, and various traits.

How do Web3 applications fetch NFT metadata? The ERC721 standard specification defines an extension called ERC721Metadata that defines a tokenURI() function that can take in a _tokenId field and outputs a link to the off-chain token metadata described above. Nowadays, most ERC721 contracts actually extend ERC721Metadata by default.

We will not go into too much detail on how to structure your metadata schema, since we cover this extensively in our Metadata Standards guide. There are many different approaches that developers can take for assigning metadata to tokenIds, but OpenZeppelin's ERC721 makes it easy to create a single baseURI that serves as a prefix to all tokenURIs (e.g. https://my-nft-metadata.com/{token-id}).

Extending our existing contract

We can extend the NFT.sol contract from Step 1 to have a setter and getter for baseURI that can then be used by OZ's default tokenURI() implementation:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.0;

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC721/ERC721.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/utils/Counters.sol";

contract NFT is ERC721 {
  using Counters for Counters.Counter;

  Counters.Counter private currentTokenId;

  /// @dev Base token URI used as a prefix by tokenURI().
  string public baseTokenURI;

  constructor() ERC721("NFTTutorial", "NFT") {
    baseTokenURI = "";
  }

  function mintTo(address recipient) public returns (uint256) {
    currentTokenId.increment();
    uint256 newItemId = currentTokenId.current();
    _safeMint(recipient, newItemId);
    return newItemId;
  }

  /// @dev Returns an URI for a given token ID
  function _baseURI() internal view virtual override returns (string memory) {
    return baseTokenURI;
  }

  /// @dev Sets the base token URI prefix.
  function setBaseTokenURI(string memory _baseTokenURI) public {
    baseTokenURI = _baseTokenURI;
  }
}

This addition to the contract will make it so that calling tokenURI() for any of our minted tokenIds will return the baseTokenURI + tokenId without any additional work on our end.

Now we can move on to uploading some metadata and then we can use the setBaseTokenURI() function to set the metadata on tokens after the contract is deployed. You can go ahead and use the Hardhat deploy task to deploy the contract again. Note that this is a brand new contract in the EVM's mind, with no relation to any previous deployments of it that we have done.

🚧
Smart Contract tip
An alternative strategy some developers use is to override the _baseURI() method to return a hard-coded string "https://your-token-metadata.com/metadata/". This allows you as the developer to save on gas by avoiding having to call setBaseTokenURI(), at the added restriction of not being able to change your metadata after it is deployed.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will "take the long way" in order to better understand interacting with Ethereum smart contracts.

NFT Metadata Storage

NFT metadata can stored anywhere. It can be provided by a simple server you can create or on a cloud-based solution like AWS. These centralized options, however, are counterintuitive to the ethos of the Web3 movement and are therefore typically not preferred to more decentralized solutions like InterPlanetary File system (IPFS) or Arweave.

For this tutorial, we will rely on IPFS and Protocol Lab's NFT Storage for metadata storage, but you could consider other solution providers such as Arweave or Pinata if your needs call for data permeance or ease-of-use.

Follow the instructions on NFT Storage's site to register for an account and we can begin using their webapp to create and upload metadata for our tokens

Creating & Uploading Metadata

Create two directories in your project root: /images /metadata. The /images directory will store all our images, which we will need to upload first and /metadata will store all the JSON files for the tokens in your NFT contract and we will upload all of them at once as a compiled IPFS Car. This ensures that they all have the same base endpoint with individual tokenIDs appended at the end.

Feel free to use your own images here or some of the lovely OpenSea Creatures below:

Once you have some images in the /images directory, pack them to an IPFS-compatible CAR using a handy CLI command:

npx ipfs-car --pack images --output images.car

> npx ipfs-car --pack images --output images.car
root CID: bafybeihslhol5draa26unhhe7j2crwedr4tyfrvmba5qt3kyxbvb5olk4i
  output: images.car

Next navigate to the NFT Storage Files page to upload this CAR file to IPFS:

Once uploaded, you should be able to click through the CID for the uploaded directory and browse through your images, which are now officially on IPFS!

Now we can begin creating our metadata JSON files, with IPFS images included. In /metadata, go ahead and create 3 files: 1, 2, and 3 (don't worry about not adding a file extension). Fill these files with sample data such as below:

{
    "description" : "Friendly OpenSea Creature that enjoys long swims in the ocean.",
    "external_url" : "https://example.com/?token_id=1",
    "image" : "https://bafybeihslhol5draa26unhhe7j2crwedr4tyfrvmba5qt3kyxbvb5olk4i.ipfs.dweb.link/images/1.png",
    "name" : "Sprinkles Fisherton"
 }

{
   "attributes" : [
      {
         "trait_type" : "level",
         "value" : 3
      },
      {
         "trait_type" : "stamina",
         "value" : 11.7
      },
      {
         "trait_type" : "personality",
         "value" : "sleepy"
      },
      {
         "display_type" : "boost_number",
         "trait_type" : "aqua_power",
         "value" : 30
      },
      {
         "display_type" : "boost_percentage",
         "trait_type" : "stamina_increase",
         "value" : 15
      },
      {
         "display_type" : "number",
         "trait_type" : "generation",
         "value" : 1
      }
   ],
   "description" : "Friendly OpenSea Creature that enjoys long swims in the ocean.",
   "external_url" : "https://example.com/?token_id=2",
   "image" : "https://storage.googleapis.com/opensea-prod.appspot.com/creature/2.png",
   "name" : "Boris McCoy"
}

{
    "description" : "Friendly OpenSea Creature that enjoys long swims in the ocean.",
    "external_url" : "https://example.com/?token_id=1",
    "image" : "https://bafybeihslhol5draa26unhhe7j2crwedr4tyfrvmba5qt3kyxbvb5olk4i.ipfs.dweb.link/images/3.png",
    "name" : "Dave Starbelly"
 }

Use the same IPFS-CAR CLI command from earlier on the metadata folder and upload that as well to NFT Storage:

npx ipfs-car --pack metadata --output metadata.car

> npx ipfs-car --pack metadata --output metadata.car
root CID: bafybeif6iuokmmcuwj7jgscybx3gvlcwkb6ybspwcduivl7mbqmgmmxubi
  output: metadata.car

Once you upload to NFT Storage, your metadata is ready to be set onto your smart contract! We already know what the base URL is due to IPFS since it is the root CID returned in the CLI command: bafybeif6iuokmmcuwj7jgscybx3gvlcwkb6ybspwcduivl7mbqmgmmxubi

As a verification check, your project directory should look more or less as follows:

tree -L 3 -I 'node_modules*|cache*'

> tree -L 3 -I 'node_modules*|cache*'

.
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── artifacts
│   ├── @openzeppelin
│   │   └── contracts
│   ├── build-info
│   │   └── f179c78b6322d2fddc1e72511467aa46.json
│   └── contracts
│       └── NFT.sol
├── contracts
│   └── NFT.sol
├── hardhat.config.js
├── images
│   ├── 1.png
│   ├── 2.png
│   └── 3.png
├── images.car
├── metadata
│   ├── 1
│   ├── 2
│   └── 3
├── metadata.car
├── package-lock.json
├── package.json
└── scripts
    ├── deploy.js
    ├── helpers.js
    └── mint.js

Adding a Hardhat task to set metadata

Now lets work on two new tasks: one for calling setBaseTokenURI() to set new values and one for calling tokenURI() to fetch token metadata. Open the scripts/mint.js tasks file and implement as follows:

const { task } = require("hardhat/config");
const { getContract } = require("./helpers");
const fetch = require("node-fetch");

task("mint", "Mints from the NFT contract")
.addParam("address", "The address to receive a token")
.setAction(async function (taskArguments, hre) {
    const contract = await getContract("NFT", hre);
    const transactionResponse = await contract.mintTo(taskArguments.address, {
        gasLimit: 500_000,
    });
    console.log(`Transaction Hash: ${transactionResponse.hash}`);
});

task("set-base-token-uri", "Sets the base token URI for the deployed smart contract")
.addParam("baseUrl", "The base of the tokenURI endpoint to set")
.setAction(async function (taskArguments, hre) {
    const contract = await getContract("NFT", hre);
    const transactionResponse = await contract.setBaseTokenURI(taskArguments.baseUrl, {
        gasLimit: 500_000,
    });
    console.log(`Transaction Hash: ${transactionResponse.hash}`);
});


task("token-uri", "Fetches the token metadata for the given token ID")
.addParam("tokenId", "The tokenID to fetch metadata for")
.setAction(async function (taskArguments, hre) {
    const contract = await getContract("NFT", hre);
    const response = await contract.tokenURI(taskArguments.tokenId, {
        gasLimit: 500_000,
    });
    
    const metadata_url = response;
    console.log(`Metadata URL: ${metadata_url}`);

    const metadata = await fetch(metadata_url).then(res => res.json());
    console.log(`Metadata fetch response: ${JSON.stringify(metadata, null, 2)}`);
});

Putting it all together

We are now ready to deploy a new contract and set the metadata on it using our new set-token-uri task. Finally, we can call our token-uri task and actually get the metadata for tokens we have minted.

npx hardhat compile

You should see a response that looks like this:

> npx hardhat compile
Compiling 11 files with 0.8.0
Compilation finished successfully

> npx hardhat deploy
Contract deployed to address: 0xEC98C68b96e8D89D17C99a742CC37b5b2298dB41


Set your NFT_CONTRACT_ADDRESS env variable and source your .env file
> . .env
> npx hardhat set-base-token-uri --base-url "https://bafybeif6iuokmmcuwj7jgscybx3gvlcwkb6ybspwcduivl7mbqmgmmxubi.ipfs.dweb.link/metadata/"
Transaction Hash: 0xdd9a44d4131ee48db493d0484b0b294bff8135b678fa0e029677d04e3683eca8

> npx hardhat mint --address 0xb9720BE63Ea8896956A06d2dEd491De125fD705E
Transaction Hash: 0x99b09300643f6e95563a6f54b94366f79daef835969a53933b1dc43208341a18

> npx hardhat mint --address 0xb9720BE63Ea8896956A06d2dEd491De125fD705E
Transaction Hash: 0x661c48b2e306210fde28765786116a6dc4f955f2d44f09dee2ed66f9c9c4f79a

> npx hardhat token-uri --token-id 1
Metadata URL: https://bafybeif6iuokmmcuwj7jgscybx3gvlcwkb6ybspwcduivl7mbqmgmmxubi.ipfs.dweb.link/metadata/1
Metadata fetch response: {
  "description": "Friendly OpenSea Creature that enjoys long swims in the ocean.",
  "external_url": "https://example.com/?token_id=1",
  "image": "https://bafybeihslhol5draa26unhhe7j2crwedr4tyfrvmba5qt3kyxbvb5olk4i.ipfs.dweb.link/images/1.png",
  "name": "Sprinkles Fisherton"
}

> npx hardhat token-uri --token-id 2
Metadata URL: https://bafybeif6iuokmmcuwj7jgscybx3gvlcwkb6ybspwcduivl7mbqmgmmxubi.ipfs.dweb.link/metadata/2
Metadata fetch response: {
  "description": "Friendly OpenSea Creature that enjoys long swims in the ocean.",
  "external_url": "https://example.com/?token_id=1",
  "image": "https://bafybeihslhol5draa26unhhe7j2crwedr4tyfrvmba5qt3kyxbvb5olk4i.ipfs.dweb.link/images/2.png",
  "name": "Boris McCoy"
}

We're all set! Our contract is compiled & deployed, our tokens are minted, and our metadata is set and fetched.

You can view the repository in a complete state for part 3 on this dedicated branch on GitHub.

3. Adding metadata and payments to your contract

📘
Section Prerequisites

Intro to NFT Metadata

Extending our existing contract

🚧
Smart Contract tip

NFT Metadata Storage

Creating & Uploading Metadata

Adding a Hardhat task to set metadata

Putting it all together

📘Section Prerequisites

Intro to NFT Metadata

Extending our existing contract

🚧Smart Contract tip

NFT Metadata Storage

Creating & Uploading Metadata

Adding a Hardhat task to set metadata

Putting it all together

📘
Section Prerequisites

🚧
Smart Contract tip