How to read an account state without needing Phantom wallet provider?

Question

I create an instance of a Program in the following way and try to read accounts from the program instance.

const network = clusterApiUrl('devnet');
const connection = new Connection(network, "processed");
const provider = return new AnchorProvider(
    connection, window.solana, { preflightCommitment: "processed" },
);
const program = new Program<any>(idl, programID, provider)

Problem: If a user doesn't have Phantom wallet installed this would fail with the following error:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘publicKey’)

Question: How can I properly instantiate a Program to read accounts when a user doesn't have Phantom installed?

Answer 1

I found a workaround. If the solana object is not found in window, passing a random public key solves the problem.

const wallet = window.solana ?? Keypair.generate();
return new AnchorProvider(
    connection, wallet, { preflightCommitment: "processed" },
);