EIP 165: ERC-165 Standard Interface Detection

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: Note: The following is an excerpt from the official Ethereum site. It is provided here as a connivence and is not authoritative. Refer to the original document as the authoritative reference.

Data sheet for Standard Interface Detection

Title	Standard Interface Detection
Author	Christian Reitwießner, Nick Johnson, Fabian Vogelsteller, Jordi Baylina, Konrad Feldmeier, William Entriken
Status	Final
Created	2018-01-23
Description	http://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-165
Specification	http://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-165#Specification
Category	ERC
Requires	EIP 214

Simple Summary

: Creates a standard method to publish and detect what interfaces a smart contract implements.

Abstract

Herein, we standardize the following:How interfaces are identifiedHow a contract will publish the interfaces it implementsHow to detect if a contract implements ERC-165How to detect if a contract implements any given interface

Motivation

For some “standard interfaces” like the ERC-20 token interface, it is sometimes useful to query whether a contract supports the interface and if yes, which version of the interface, in order to adapt the way in which the contract is to be interacted with. Specifically for ERC-20, a version identifier has already been proposed. This proposal standardizes the concept of interfaces and standardizes the identification (naming) of interfaces.