Unable to sign from polkadot-js console using Talisman

Question

When submitting a script through polkadot-js console and trying to sign using Talisman wallet, I got the error Cannot sign with a locked key pair:

The script is one of the examples, where SENDER is the address from my Talisman wallet:

const SENDER = '5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY';
const RECEIVER = '5FHneW46xGXgs5mUiveU4sbTyGBzmstUspZC92UhjJM694ty';

// Get a random number between 1 and 100000
const randomAmount = Math.floor((Math.random() * 100000) + 1);

// Create a extrinsic, transferring randomAmount units to receiver.
const transfer = api.tx.balances.transferAllowDeath(RECEIVER, randomAmount);

// Sign and Send the transaction
await transfer.signAndSend(SENDER, ({ events = [], status }) => {
  if (status.isInBlock) {
    console.log('Successful transfer of ' + randomAmount + ' with hash ' + status.asInBlock.toHex());
  } else {
    console.log('Status of transfer: ' + status.type);
  }

  events.forEach(({ phase, event: { data, method, section } }) => {
    console.log(phase.toString() + ' : ' + section + '.' + method + ' ' + data.toString());
  });
});

Environment

• Brave Browser - Version 1.65.114 Chromium: 124.0.6367.60 (Official Build) (64-bit)
• Talisman Wallet - Version v1.25.0

Answer 1

The error is in the message - the keypair is locked. It's locked because you've only used the public key (the account) and not a private key when signing and sending. You need to either unlock it with a password pair.unlock or add the pair from the URI since you're working in dev mode:

// get the alice pair
const alicePair = keyring.addFromUri('//Alice');

// Sign and Send the transaction
await transfer.signAndSend(alicePair, ({ events = [], status }) => {

Source: Working with keypairs

EDIT: To unlock an account from Talisman, you need to take the outputted JSON and load as follows

const ss58Format = 42 // depends on the chain you're using
const json = JSON.parse(secret)
const {
    encoding: { content },
} = json
const keyring = new Keyring({ type: content[1], ss58Format })
            return keyring.addFromJson(json as KeyringPair$Json)

You can get the ss58 value from the ss58 registry.

Then when you use the keypair to send transactions you will need to unlock it with the password using

pair.unlock(password)
// do tx