17: Using the Candid UI to test functions in a browser

Beginner

Motoko

Overview

The canister interface description language, often referred to as Candid or more generally as the IDL, provides a common language for specifying the signature of a canister smart contract.

Candid provides a unified way for you to interact with canister smart contracts that are written in different languages or accessed using different tools. For example, Candid provides a consistent view of a service whether the underlying program is native Rust, JavaScript, or any other programming language. Candid also enables different tools, such as the dfx command-line interface and the Network Nervous System dapp, to share a common description for a service.

Based on the type signature of the actor, Candid also provides a web interface that allows you to call canister functions for testing and debugging.

Using Candid UI

To learn how to use Candid, check out the documentation here:

• Candid UI.

• What is Candid?.

• Using Candid.

• Candid specification.

Next steps

In the next step, you'll explore a scalable dapp example.