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Account management

Account management is one of the core capabilities provided by AlgoKit Utils. It allows you to create mnemonic, rekeyed, multisig, transaction signer, idempotent KMD and environment variable injected accounts that can be used to sign transactions as well as representing a sender address at the same time. This significantly simplifies management of transaction signing.

AccountManager

Section titled “AccountManager”

The AccountManager is a class that is used to get, create, and fund accounts and perform account-related actions such as funding. The AccountManager also keeps track of signers for each address so when using the TransactionComposer to send transactions, a signer function does not need to manually be specified for each transaction - instead it can be inferred from the sender address automatically!

To get an instance of AccountManager, you can use either AlgorandClient via algorand.account or instantiate it directly:

from algokit_utils import AccountManager


account_manager = AccountManager(client_manager)

TransactionSignerAccountProtocol

Section titled “TransactionSignerAccountProtocol”

The core internal type that holds information about a signer/sender pair for a transaction is TransactionSignerAccountProtocol, which represents an algosdk.transaction.TransactionSigner (signer) along with a sender address (address) as the encoded string address.

The following conform to TransactionSignerAccountProtocol:

  • TransactionSignerAccount - a basic transaction signer account that holds an address and a signer conforming to TransactionSignerAccountProtocol
  • SigningAccount - an abstraction that used to be available under Account in previous versions of AlgoKit Utils. Renamed for consistency with equivalent ts version. Holds private key and conforms to TransactionSignerAccountProtocol
  • LogicSigAccount - a wrapper class around algosdk logicsig abstractions conforming to TransactionSignerAccountProtocol
  • MultisigAccount - a wrapper class around algosdk multisig abstractions conforming to TransactionSignerAccountProtocol

Registering a signer

Section titled “Registering a signer”

The AccountManager keeps track of which signer is associated with a given sender address. This is used by AlgorandClient to automatically sign transactions by that sender. Any of the methods within AccountManager that return an account will automatically register the signer with the sender.

There are two methods that can be used for this, set_signer_from_account, which takes any number of account based objects that combine signer and sender (TransactionSignerAccount | SigningAccount | LogicSigAccount | MultisigAccount), or set_signer which takes the sender address and the TransactionSigner:

algorand.account
  .set_signer_from_account(TransactionSignerAccount(your_address, your_signer))
  .set_signer_from_account(SigningAccount.new_account())
  .set_signer_from_account(
    LogicSigAccount(algosdk.transaction.LogicSigAccount(program, args))
  )
  .set_signer_from_account(
    MultisigAccount(
      MultisigMetadata(
        version = 1,
        threshold = 1,
        addresses = ["ADDRESS1...", "ADDRESS2..."]
      ),
      [account1, account2]
    )
  )
  .set_signer("SENDERADDRESS", transaction_signer)

Default signer

Section titled “Default signer”

If you want to have a default signer that is used to sign transactions without a registered signer (rather than throwing an exception) then you can set_default_signer:

algorand.account.set_default_signer(my_default_signer)

Get a signer

Section titled “Get a signer”

AlgorandClient will automatically retrieve a signer when signing a transaction, but if you need to get a TransactionSigner externally to do something more custom then you can get_signer for a given sender address:

signer = algorand.account.get_signer("SENDER_ADDRESS")

If there is no signer registered for that sender address it will either return the default signer (if registered) or throw an exception.

Accounts

Section titled “Accounts”

In order to get/register accounts for signing operations you can use the following methods on AccountManager (expressed here as algorand.account to denote the syntax via an AlgorandClient):

  • from_environment - Registers and returns an account with private key loaded by convention based on the given name identifier - either by idempotently creating the account in KMD or from environment variable via process.env['{NAME}_MNEMONIC'] and (optionally) process.env['{NAME}_SENDER'] (if account is rekeyed)
    • This allows you to have powerful code that will automatically create and fund an account by name locally and when deployed against TestNet/MainNet will automatically resolve from environment variables, without having to have different code
    • Note: fund_with allows you to control how many Algo are seeded into an account created in KMD
  • from_mnemonic - Registers and returns an account with secret key loaded by taking the mnemonic secret
  • multisig - Registers and returns a multisig account with one or more signing keys loaded
  • rekeyed - Registers and returns an account representing the given rekeyed sender/signer combination
  • random - Returns a new, cryptographically randomly generated account with private key loaded
  • from_kmd - Returns an account with private key loaded from the given KMD wallet (identified by name)
  • logicsig - Returns an account that represents a logic signature

Underlying account classes

Section titled “Underlying account classes”

While TransactionSignerAccount is the main class used to represent an account that can sign, there are underlying account classes that can underpin the signer within the transaction signer account.

  • TransactionSignerAccount - A default class conforming to TransactionSignerAccountProtocol that holds an address and a signer
  • SigningAccount - An abstraction around algosdk.Account that supports rekeyed accounts
  • LogicSigAccount - An abstraction around algosdk.LogicSigAccount and algosdk.LogicSig that supports logic sig signing. Exposes access to the underlying algosdk algosdk.transaction.LogicSigAccount object instance via lsig property.
  • MultisigAccount - An abstraction around algosdk.MultisigMetadata, algosdk.makeMultiSigAccountTransactionSigner, algosdk.multisigAddress, algosdk.signMultisigTransaction and algosdk.appendSignMultisigTransaction that supports multisig accounts with one or more signers present. Exposes access to the underlying algosdk algosdk.transaction.Multisig object instance via multisig property.

Dispenser

Section titled “Dispenser”
  • dispenser_from_environment - Returns an account (with private key loaded) that can act as a dispenser from environment variables, or against default LocalNet if no environment variables present
  • localnet_dispenser - Returns an account with private key loaded that can act as a dispenser for the default LocalNet dispenser account

Rekey account

Section titled “Rekey account”

One of the unique features of Algorand is the ability to change the private key that can authorise transactions for an account. This is called rekeying.

[!WARNING] Rekeying should be done with caution as a rekey transaction can result in permanent loss of control of an account.

You can issue a transaction to rekey an account by using the rekey_account function:

  • account: string | TransactionSignerAccount - The account address or signing account of the account that will be rekeyed
  • rekeyTo: string | TransactionSignerAccount - The account address or signing account of the account that will be used to authorise transactions for the rekeyed account going forward. If a signing account is provided that will now be tracked as the signer for account in the AccountManager instance.
  • An options object, which has:

You can also pass in rekeyTo as a common transaction parameter to any transaction.

Examples

Section titled “Examples”
# Basic example (with string addresses)


algorand.account.rekey_account({
  account: "ACCOUNTADDRESS",
  rekey_to: "NEWADDRESS",
})


# Basic example (with signer accounts)


algorand.account.rekey_account({
  account: account1,
  rekey_to: new_signer_account,
})


# Advanced example


algorand.account.rekey_account({
  account: "ACCOUNTADDRESS",
  rekey_to: "NEWADDRESS",
  lease: "lease",
  note: "note",
  first_valid_round: 1000,
  validity_window: 10,
  extra_fee: AlgoAmount.from_micro_algos(1000),
  static_fee: AlgoAmount.from_micro_algos(1000),
  # Max fee doesn't make sense with extra_fee AND static_fee
  #  already specified, but here for completeness
  max_fee: AlgoAmount.from_micro_algos(3000),
  max_rounds_to_wait_for_confirmation: 5,
  suppress_log: True,
})




# Using a rekeyed account


Note: if a signing account is passed into `algorand.account.rekey_account` then you don't need to call `rekeyed_account` to register the new signer


rekeyed_account = algorand.account.rekey_account(account, new_account)
# rekeyed_account can be used to sign transactions on behalf of account...

KMD account management

Section titled “KMD account management”

When running LocalNet, you have an instance of the Key Management Daemon, which is useful for:

  • Accessing the private key of the default accounts that are pre-seeded with Algo so that other accounts can be funded and it’s possible to use LocalNet
  • Idempotently creating new accounts against a name that will stay intact while the LocalNet instance is running without you needing to store private keys anywhere (i.e. completely automated)

The KMD SDK is fairly low level so to make use of it there is a fair bit of boilerplate code that’s needed. This code has been abstracted away into the KmdAccountManager class.

To get an instance of the KmdAccountManager class you can access it from AlgorandClient via algorand.account.kmd or instantiate it directly (passing in a ClientManager):

from algokit_utils import KmdAccountManager


kmd_account_manager = KmdAccountManager(client_manager)

The methods that are available are:

  • get_wallet_account - Returns an Algorand signing account with private key loaded from the given KMD wallet (identified by name).
  • get_or_create_wallet_account - Gets an account with private key loaded from a KMD wallet of the given name, or alternatively creates one with funds in it via a KMD wallet of the given name.
  • get_localnet_dispenser_account - Returns an Algorand account with private key loaded for the default LocalNet dispenser account (that can be used to fund other accounts)
# Get a wallet account that seeded the LocalNet network
default_dispenser_account = kmd_account_manager.get_wallet_account(
    "unencrypted-default-wallet",
    lambda a: a["status"] != "Offline" and a["amount"] > 1_000_000_000
)
# Same as above, but dedicated method call for convenience
localnet_dispenser_account = kmd_account_manager.get_localnet_dispenser_account()
# Idempotently get (if exists) or create (if it doesn't exist yet) an account by name using KMD
# if creating it then fund it with 2 ALGO from the default dispenser account
new_account = kmd_account_manager.get_or_create_wallet_account(
  "account1",
  AlgoAmount.from_algos(2)
)
# This will return the same account as above since the name matches
existing_account = kmd_account_manager.get_or_create_wallet_account(
  "account1"
)

Some of this functionality is directly exposed from AccountManager, which has the added benefit of registering the account as a signer so they can be automatically used to sign transactions when using via AlgorandClient:

# Get and register LocalNet dispenser
localnet_dispenser = algorand.account.localnet_dispenser()
# Get and register a dispenser by environment variable, or if not set then LocalNet dispenser via KMD
dispenser = algorand.account.dispenser_from_environment()
# Get an account from KMD idempotently by name. In this case we'll get the default dispenser account
dispenser_via_kmd = algorand.account.from_kmd('unencrypted-default-wallet', lambda a: a.status != 'Offline' and a.amount > 1_000_000_000)
# Get / create and register account from KMD idempotently by name
fresh_account_via_kmd = algorand.account.kmd.get_or_create_wallet_account('account1', AlgoAmount.from_algos(2))