The Accounts Struct

The Accounts struct is where you define which accounts your instruction expects and which constraints these accounts should adhere to. You do this via two constructs: Types and constraints.

Types

Account Types Reference

Each type has a specific use case in mind. Detailed explanations for the types can be found in the reference. We will briefly explain the most important type here, the Account type.

The Account Type

Account Reference

The Account type is used when an instruction is interested in the deserialized data of the account. Consider the following example where we set some data in an account:

use anchor_lang::prelude::*;


declare_id!("Fg6PaFpoGXkYsidMpWTK6W2BeZ7FEfcYkg476zPFsLnS");


#[program]
mod hello_anchor {
    use super::*;
    pub fn set_data(ctx: Context<SetData>, data: u64) -> Result<()> {
        ctx.accounts.my_account.data = data;
        Ok(())
    }
}


#[account]
#[derive(Default)]
pub struct MyAccount {
    data: u64
}


#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct SetData<'info> {
    #[account(mut)]
    pub my_account: Account<'info, MyAccount>
}

Account is generic over T. This T is a type you can create yourself to store data. In this example, we have created a struct MyAccount with a single data field to store a u64. Account requires T to implement certain functions (e.g. functions that (de)serialize T). Most of the time, you can use the #[account] attribute to add these functions to your data, as is done in the example.

Most importantly, the #[account] attribute sets the owner of that data to the ID (the one we created earlier with declare_id) of the crate #[account] is used in. The Account type can then check for you that the AccountInfo passed into your instruction has its owner field set to the correct program. In this example, MyAccount is declared in our own crate so Account will verify that the owner of my_account equals the address we declared with declare_id.

Using Account<'a, T> with non-anchor program accounts

There may be cases where you want your program to interact with a non-Anchor program. You can still get all the benefits of Account but you have to write a custom wrapper type instead of using #[account]. For instance, Anchor provides wrapper types for the token program accounts so they can be used with Account.

use anchor_lang::prelude::*;
use anchor_spl::token::TokenAccount;


declare_id!("Fg6PaFpoGXkYsidMpWTK6W2BeZ7FEfcYkg476zPFsLnS");


#[program]
mod hello_anchor {
    use super::*;
    pub fn set_data(ctx: Context<SetData>, data: u64) -> Result<()> {
        if ctx.accounts.token_account.amount > 0 {
            ctx.accounts.my_account.data = data;
        }
        Ok(())
    }
}


#[account]
#[derive(Default)]
pub struct MyAccount {
    data: u64,
    mint: Pubkey
}


#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct SetData<'info> {
    #[account(mut)]
    pub my_account: Account<'info, MyAccount>,
    #[account(
        constraint = my_account.mint == token_account.mint,
        has_one = owner
    )]
    pub token_account: Account<'info, TokenAccount>,
    pub owner: Signer<'info>
}

To run this example, add anchor-spl = "<version>" to the dependencies section in your Cargo.toml, located in the programs/<your-project-name>/ directory. <version> should be equal to the anchor-lang version you're using.

In this example, we set the data field of an account if the caller has admin rights. We decide whether the caller is an admin by checking whether they own admin tokens for the account they want to change. We do most of this via constraints which we will look at in the next section. The important thing to take away is that we use the TokenAccount type (that wraps around the token program's Account struct and adds the required functions) to make anchor ensure that the incoming account is owned by the token program and to make anchor deserialize it. This means we can use the TokenAccount properties inside our constraints (e.g. token_account.mint) as well as in the instruction function.

Check out the reference for the Account type to learn how to implement your own wrapper types for non-anchor programs.

Constraints

Constraints reference

Account types can do a lot of work for you but they're not dynamic enough to handle all the security checks a secure program requires.

Add constraints to an account with the following format:

#[account(<constraints>)]
pub account: AccountType

Some constraints support custom Errors (we will explore errors later):

#[account(...,<constraint> @ MyError::MyErrorVariant, ...)]
pub account: AccountType

For example, in the examples above, we used the mut constraint to indicate that my_account should be mutable. We used has_one to check that token_account.owner == owner.key(). And finally we used constraint to check an arbitrary expression; in this case, whether the incoming TokenAccount belongs to the admin mint.

#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct SetData<'info> {
    #[account(mut)]
    pub my_account: Account<'info, MyAccount>,
    #[account(
        constraint = my_account.mint == token_account.mint,
        has_one = owner
    )]
    pub token_account: Account<'info, TokenAccount>,
    pub owner: Signer<'info>
}

You can find information about all constraints in the reference. We will cover some of the most important ones in the milestone project at the end of the Essentials section.

Safety checks

Two of the Anchor account types, AccountInfo and UncheckedAccount do not implement any checks on the account being passed. Anchor implements safety checks that encourage additional documentation describing why additional checks are not necessary.

Attempting to build a program containing the following excerpt with anchor build:

#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct Initialize<'info> {
    pub potentially_dangerous: UncheckedAccount<'info>
}

will result in an error similar to the following:

Error:
        /anchor/tests/unchecked/programs/unchecked/src/lib.rs:15:8
        Struct field "potentially_dangerous" is unsafe, but is not documented.
        Please add a `/// CHECK:` doc comment explaining why no checks through types are necessary.
        See https://book.anchor-lang.com/anchor_in_depth/the_accounts_struct.html#safety-checks for more information.

To fix this, write a doc comment describing the potential security implications, e.g.:

#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct Initialize<'info> {
    /// CHECK: This is not dangerous because we don't read or write from this account
    pub potentially_dangerous: UncheckedAccount<'info>
}

Disabling safety checks

For purposes like quick prototyping, you can disable the safety checks by appending the --skip-lint option to Anchor CLI commands:

anchor build --skip-lint
# or
anchor test --skip-lint

Or, you can disable the safety checks globally by setting skip-lint to true in the [features] section of your Anchor.toml file.

[features]
skip-lint = true

Other Resources

• Solana Cookbook