The js-ipfs from alexxnica

The JavaScript implementation of the IPFS protocol.

Project status

We've come a long way, but this project is still in Alpha, lots of development is happening, API might change, beware of the Dragons 🐉..

Want to get started? Check our examples folder to learn how to spawn an IPFS node in Node.js and in the Browser.

You can check the development status at:

Install
Usage
Packages
Development
Contribute
- Want to hack on IPFS?
License

Install

This project is available through npm. To install:

> npm install ipfs --save

Requires npm@3 and node >= 4.5, tested on OSX & Linux, expected to work on Windows.

Use in Node.js

To include this project programmatically:

const IPFS = require('ipfs')

const node = new IPFS()

Through command line tool

In order to use js-ipfs as a CLI, you must install it with the global flag. Run the following (even if you have ipfs installed locally):

$ npm install ipfs --global

The CLI is available by using the command jsipfs in your terminal. This is aliased, instead of using ipfs, to make sure it does not conflict with the Go implementation.

Use in the browser with browserify, webpack or any bundler

Simply require it as you would do for Node.js, but when transpiling+minifying with your bundler, make sure to swap zlib with a full replacement for the browser: zlib: 'browserify-zlib-next'. We have submitted PR's to browserify and WebPack to make this as part of the standard node libraries that are transpiled, you can follow this development in browserify, webpack.

You can also find examples of how to do this bundling at: https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/tree/master/examples

Special note, if you are using webpack, make sure to use version 2 or above, otherwise it won't work.

Use in a browser using a script tag

Loading this module in a browser (using a <script> tag) makes the Ipfs object available in the global namespace.

The last published version of the package become available for download from unpkg and thus you may use it as the source:

<!-- loading the minified version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/ipfs/dist/index.min.js"></script>

<!-- loading the human-readable (not minified) version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/ipfs/dist/index.js"></script>

Usage

CLI

The jsipfs CLI, available when js-ipfs is installed globally, follows(should, it is a WIP) the same interface defined by go-ipfs, you can always use the help command for help menus.

# Install js-ipfs globally
> npm install ipfs --global
> jsipfs --help
Commands:
  bitswap               A set of commands to manipulate the bitswap agent.
  block                 Manipulate raw IPFS blocks.
  bootstrap             Show or edit the list of bootstrap peers.
  commands              List all available commands
  config <key> [value]  Get and set IPFS config values
  daemon                Start a long-running daemon process
# ...

js-ipfs uses some different default config values, so that they don't clash directly with a go-ipfs node running in the same machine. These are:

default repo location: ~/.jsipfs (can be changed with env variable IPFS_PATH)
default swarm port: 4002
default API port: 5002
default Bootstrap is off, to enable it set IPFS_BOOTSTRAP=1

HTTP-API

The HTTP-API exposed by the js-ipfs daemon follows the http-api-spec. You can use any of the IPFS HTTP-API client libraries with it, such as: js-ipfs-api.

IPFS Core examples (use IPFS as a module)

Create a IPFS node instance

// IPFS will need a repo, it can create one for you or you can pass
// it a repo instance of the type IPFS Repo
// https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs-repo
const repo = <IPFS Repo instance or repo path>

// Create the IPFS node instance
const node = new IPFS({
  repo: repo,
  EXPERIMENTAL: {
    pubsub: false
  }
})

// We need to init our repo, in this case the repo was empty
// We are picking 2048 bits for the RSA key that will be our PeerId
node.init({ emptyRepo: true, bits: 2048 }, (err) => {
   if (err) { throw err }

   // Once the repo is initiated, we have to load it so that the IPFS
   // instance has its config values. This is useful when you have
   // previous created repos and you don't need to generate a new one
   node.load((err) => {
     if (err) { throw err }

     // Last but not the least, we want our IPFS node to use its peer
     // connections to fetch and serve blocks from.
     node.goOnline((err) => {
       if (err) { throw err }
       // Here you should be good to go and call any IPFS function
   })
})

We are working on making this init process better, see ipfs#556 for the discussion.

Tutorials and Examples

You can find some examples and tutorials in the examples folder, these exist to help you get started using js-ipfs.

API

A complete API definition is in the works. Meanwhile, you can learn how to you use js-ipfs through the standard interface at .

Packages

Package	Version	Deps	DevDeps
API Specs
`interface-ipfs-core`
`http-api-spec`
`cli spec`
Repo
`ipfs-repo`
DAG
`ipld-resolver`
`ipld-dag-pb`
`ipld-dag-cbor`
Files
`ipfs-unixfs-engine`
Exchange
`ipfs-block-service`
Swarm/libp2p
`js-libp2p`
`libp2p-ipfs-nodejs`
`libp2p-ipfs-browser`
Data Types
`ipfs-block`
`ipfs-unixfs`
`peer-id`
`peer-info`
`multiaddr`
`multihashes`
Generics/Utils
`ipfs-api`
`ipfs-multipart`
`multihashing`
`mafmt`

Development

Clone and install dependencies

> git clone https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs.git
> cd js-ipfs
> npm install

Run unit tests

# run all the unit tsts
> npm test

# run just IPFS tests in Node.js
> npm run test:unit:node:core

# run just IPFS core tests
> npm run test:unit:node:core

# run just IPFS HTTP-API tests
> npm run test:unit:node:http

# run just IPFS CLI tests
> npm run test:unit:node:cli

# run just IPFS core tests in the Browser (Chrome)
> npm run test:unit:browser

Run interop tests

# run all the interop tsts
> npm run test:interop

# run just IPFS interop tests in Node.js using one go-ipfs daemon and one js-ipfs daemon
> npm run test:interop:node

# run just IPFS interop testsin the Browser (Chrome) using one instance in the browser and one go-ipfs daemon
> npm run test:interop:browser

Run benchmark tests

# run all the interop tsts
> npm run test:benchmark

# run just IPFS benchmarks in Node.js
> npm run test:benchmark:node

# run just IPFS benchmarks in Node.js for an IPFS instance
> npm run test:benchmark:node:core

# run just IPFS benchmarks in Node.js for an IPFS daemon
> npm run test:benchmark:node:http

# run just IPFS benchmarks in the browser (Chrome)
> npm run test:benchmark:browser

Lint

Conforming to linting rules is a prerequisite to commit to js-ipfs.

> npm run lint

Build a dist version

> npm run build

Runtime Support

Code Architecture and folder Structure

Source code

> tree src -L 2
src                 # Main source code folder
├── cli             # Implementation of the IPFS CLI
│   └── ...
├── http-api        # The HTTP-API implementation of IPFS as defined by http-api-spec
├── core            # IPFS implementation, the core (what gets loaded in browser)
│   ├── components  # Each of IPFS subcomponent
│   └── ...
└── ...

IPFS Core Architecture

What does this image explain?

IPFS uses ipfs-repo which picks fs or indexeddb as its storage drivers, depending if it is running in Node.js or in the Browser.
The exchange protocol, bitswap, uses the Block Service which in turn uses the Repo, offering a get and put of blocks to the IPFS implementation.
The DAG api (previously Object) comes from the IPLD Resolver, it can support several IPLD Formats (i.e: dag-pb, dag-cbor, etc).
The Files API uses ipfs-unixfs-engine to import and export files to and from IPFS.
Swarm, the component that offers a network API, uses libp2p to dial and listen for connections, use the DHT, discovery mechanisms and more. libp2p-ipfs-nodejs is used in case of running in Node.js and libp2p-ipfs-browser is used in the case of the Browser.

Contribute

IPFS implementation in JavaScript is a work in progress. As such, there's a few things you can do right now to help out:

Go through the modules below and check out existing issues. This would be especially useful for modules in active development. Some knowledge of IPFS may be required, as well as the infrastructure behind it - for instance, you may need to read up on p2p and more complex operations like muxing to be able to help technically.
Perform code reviews. More eyes will help a) speed the project along b) ensure quality and c) reduce possible future bugs.
Take a look at go-ipfs and some of the planning repositories or issues: for instance, the libp2p spec here. Contributions here that would be most helpful are top-level comments about how it should look based on our understanding. Again, the more eyes the better.
Add tests. There can never be enough tests.
Contribute to the FAQ repository with any questions you have about IPFS or any of the relevant technology. A good example would be asking, 'What is a merkledag tree?'. If you don't know a term, odds are, someone else doesn't either. Eventually, we should have a good understanding of where we need to improve communications and teaching together to make IPFS and IPN better.

Want to hack on IPFS?

License

MIT.

alexxnica / js-ipfs Goto Github PK

js-ipfs's Introduction