Handle a transaction with 2 signers and make one of them pay

Question

I have this account:

#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct SignupEmployee<'info> {
    #[account(init, payer = company_account, space = 8 + 32 + 32)]
    pub employee_account: Account<'info, EmployeeState>,

    #[account(mut)]
    pub company_account: Signer<'info>,

    #[account(mut)]
    pub authority: Signer<'info>,

    pub system_program: Program<'info, System>,
}

And this test function

const employeeAccount = anchor.web3.Keypair.generate();

  await program.rpc.signupEmployee({
    accounts: {
      authority: provider.wallet.publicKey,
      companyAccount: companyAccount.publicKey,
      employeeAccount: employeeAccount.publicKey,
      systemProgram: SystemProgram.programId,
    },
    signers: [employeeAccount, companyAccount],
  });

What I want to achieve is to make the company pay for the employee signup.

Basically on my system I will have both the keys of the company and the keys of the employee.

The employee will signup with his key and the company would have to pay for the transaction.

I see that the signers is an array, so I imagine that I can enter both, the company and the employee accounts.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

in your instruction you already assigning company_account as payer for the new account initialisation, so i'm assuming that you are wondering how to pay gas fee with the same account. You could use program.instruction.signupEmployee which will output transaction instruction that you could add to the custom transaction where you can specify a gas fee payer. This way you would need to sign and send transaction using your custom code.