getting empty result form smart-contract using web3

Question

im new to web3 and solidity in general but I've been following the web documentation on calling contract methods from web3

my solidity smart-contract:

pragma solidity ^ 0.5.0;
contract Royalties {
  string public name = "RoyaltiesContract";

  uint public nextArtistId = 1;
  uint public nextSongId = 0;
  uint public nextCollabId = 0;

  mapping(uint => Artist) public Artists;
  
  struct Artist {
    uint id;
    string ArtistName;
    address ArtistAddress;
  }

  function createArtist(string memory ArtistName,address Artistaddress) public returns(uint id, string memory Name, address Address) {
      Artists[nextArtistId] = Artist(nextArtistId,ArtistName, Artistaddress);
      nextArtistId++;
       return(nextArtistId,ArtistName, Artistaddress);
  }

function getArtist(uint id) view public returns(uint, string memory , address){
            return(Artists[id].id,Artists[id].ArtistName, Artists[id].ArtistAddress);
    }

}

my web3 code after doing all the configs :

shoot(royalties) {
      const createArtist = royalties.methods.createArtist("DMX","0x518251583591f3DE330Eb539AB64b6E95C1EE5c5").call().then(
        function(result){
          console.log(result)
      },
        royalties.methods.getArtist(1).call({defaultBlock :'latest'}).then(console.log)
      )

}

keep in mind an artist with id:1 already exist the above shoot() function is trigged on-click now the first console.log which is createArtist method returns the result fine same as smart-contract like this:

Result {0: "2", 1: "DMX", 2: "0x518251583591f3DE330Eb539AB64b6E95C1EE5c5", id: "2", Name: "DMX", Address: "0x518251583591f3DE330Eb539AB64b6E95C1EE5c5"}

but the second console.log which is getArtist(1) method returns keep in mind an artist with id:1 already:

Result {0: "0", 1: "", 2: "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000"}

thank you for taking the time to read my question.

Answer 1

You need to interact with the contract function createArtist() using send(), not call().

---

send() sends a transaction, which effectively allows for writing into the contract storage.

If you haven't configured your web3 defaultSender, you'll also need to pass it an options object containing at least {from: <address>}, so that web3 knows from which address you want to send (and sign - so you need to pass its private key to web3 as well) the transaction.

call() doesn't send a transaction, just reads data. So you can safely use it for the getArtist() view function call.