Error creating contract after getting contract ABI from Etherscan API - blockchain

Question

I am trying to get the contract ABI using the Etherscan API, and then create a contract instance and call a method. I am able to get the ABI from Etherscan but when creating the contract object I am getting this error: "You must provide the json interface of the contract when instantiating a contract object."
This is what my code looks like
let url = 'https://api.etherscan.io/api?module=contract&action=getabi&address=0x672C1f1C978b8FD1E9AE18e25D0E55176824989c&apikey=<api-key>';
request(url, (err, res, body) => {
if (err) {
console.log(err);
}
let data = JSON.parse(body);
let contract_abi = data.result;
console.log(contract_abi)
let contract_address = '0x672C1f1C978b8FD1E9AE18e25D0E55176824989';
const contract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract_abi);
const contract_instance = contract.at(contract_address);
// Call contract method
})
When I console.log the contract_abi I see the ABI data. I've also tried creating the contract by doing
const contract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract_abi, contract_address)
Thanks!

Answer 1

data.result contains the JSON ABI as a string. You need to decode it as well to an object.
let contract_abi = JSON.parse(data.result);
Also, it's possible that you're using a deprecated version of Web3 that supports the contract.at() syntax.
But if you're using the current version, you'd get the contract.at is not a function error. In that case, you need to pass the address as the second argument of the Contract constructor.
const contract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract_abi, contract_address);