Name

Throughout the Antelope technology stack, the Name core type is used for human readable text. These are used for the names for accounts, permissions, and are commonly used in smart contract structures.

Anatomy

Behind the scenes, the Name type is encoded as an Int type of UInt64. This creates limitations on which characters can be used, which are:

Limited to 12 characters (13 in rare situations)
No special characters or spaces (except the period character in premium names)
Only lower case letters a-z are allowed
Only the numbers 1-5 may be used

The regex syntax for these rules is:

/^[a-z1-5.]{0,13}$/

All these rules are automatically applied and validated calls using the Name type.

Usage

Establishing a Name in code follows the basic patterns that all core types use.

import { Name } from "@wharfkit/antelope"

const value = Name.from("teamgreymass")

By default if you log or access this variable, it’ll render out the Name type.

const value = Name.from('teamgreymass')

console.log(value)
/*
Name {
  value: UInt64 {
    value: BN { negative: 0, words: [Array], length: 3, red: null }
  }
}
/*

If you cast it to a String, you’ll be able to see the human readable version.

const value = Name.from("teamgreymass")

console.log(String(value))
// 'teamgreymass'

The UInt64 value of the name itself can be accessed through the .value property of the name.

const accountName = Name.from("teamgreymass")

console.log(accountName.value) // UInt64 value of the name
console.log(String(accountName.value)) // '14595364149838066048'

Equality

When working with the Name core type, using standard logic to compare a string and a Name won’t work.

const stringValue = "teamgreymass"
const nameValue = Name.from(string)

if (stringValue === nameValue) {
  // this will work, since a string value is not equal to a `Name` type
}

Instead of doing string comparisons in your code, it’s recommended you use the equals operator to check for equality.

const stringValue = "teamgreymass"
const nameValue = Name.from(string)

if (nameValue.equals(stringValue)) {
  // this will trigger using the `equals` operator
}

The equals operator will allow comparison between any valid Name type, including plain strings, other Name instances, and UInt64 instances.

const accountName = Name.from("teamgreymass")

accountName.equals("teamgreymass") // true
accountName.equals(Name.from("teamgreymass")) // true

const uint64 = UInt64.from("14595364149838066048")

accountName.equals(uint64) // true