Tutorial 101

Demo of "Using go-ipfs as a library" with js-ipfs


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Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• About The Project
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation and Running example
• Usage
  • Code analysis
• References
• Documentation
• Contributing
• Want to hack on IPFS?

About The Project

• Read the docs
• Look into other examples to learn how to spawn an IPFS node in Node.js and in the Browser
• Consult the Core API docs to see what you can do with an IPFS node
• Visit https://dweb-primer.ipfs.io to learn about IPFS and the concepts that underpin it
• Head over to https://proto.school to take interactive tutorials that cover core IPFS APIs
• Check out https://docs.ipfs.io for tips, how-tos and more
• See https://blog.ipfs.io for news and more
• Need help? Please ask 'How do I?' questions on https://discuss.ipfs.io

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Make sure you have installed all of the following prerequisites on your development machine:

• Git - Download & Install Git. OSX and Linux machines typically have this already installed.
• Node.js - Download & Install Node.js and the npm package manager.

Installation and Running example

> npm install
> npm start

Usage

This tutorial is the sibling of the go-ipfs "Using go-ipfs as a library" tutorial.

In this tutorial, we go through spawning an IPFS node, adding a file and cat'ing the file multihash locally and through the gateway.

You can find a complete version of this tutorial in 1.js. For this tutorial, you need to install ipfs using npm install ipfs.

Code analysis

Creating an IPFS instance can be done in one line, after requiring the module, you simply have to:

import * as IPFS from 'ipfs-core';

async function main() {
  const node = await IPFS.create();
  // ...
}

main();

As a test, we are going to check the version of the node.

import * as IPFS from 'ipfs-core';

async function main() {
  const node = await IPFS.create();
  const version = await node.version();

  console.log("Version:", version.version);
  // ...
}

main();

(If you prefer not to use async/await, you can instead use .then() as you would with any promise, or pass an error-first callback, e.g. node.version((err, version) => { ... }))

Running the code above gets you:

> node 1.js
Version: 0.31.2

Now let's make it more interesting and add a file to IPFS using node.add. A file consists of a path and content.

You can learn about the IPFS File API at interface-ipfs-core.

import * as IPFS from 'ipfs-core';

async function main() {
  const node = await IPFS.create();
  const version = await node.version();

  console.log("Version:", version.version);

  const fileAdded = await node.add({
    path: "hello.txt",
    content: "Hello World 101",
  });

  console.log("Added file:", fileAdded.path, fileAdded.cid);
  // ...
}

main();

You can now go to an IPFS Gateway and load the printed hash from a gateway. Go ahead and try it!

> node 1.js
Version: 0.31.2

Added file: hello.txt QmXgZAUWd8yo4tvjBETqzUy3wLx5YRzuDwUQnBwRGrAmAo
# Copy that hash and load it on the gateway, here is a prefiled url:
# https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXgZAUWd8yo4tvjBETqzUy3wLx5YRzuDwUQnBwRGrAmAo

The last step of this tutorial is retrieving the file back using the cat 😺 call.

import * as IPFS from 'ipfs-core';

async function main() {
  const node = await IPFS.create();
  const version = await node.version();

  console.log("Version:", version.version);

  const fileAdded = await node.add({
    path: "hello.txt",
    content: "Hello World 101",
  });

  console.log("Added file:", fileAdded.path, fileAdded.cid);

  const chunks = [];
  for await (const chunk of node.cat(fileAdded.cid)) {
    chunks.push(chunk);
  }

  console.log("Added file contents:", uint8ArrayConcat(chunks).toString());
}

main();

That's it! You just added and retrieved a file from the Distributed Web!

For more examples, please refer to the Documentation

References

• Documentation:
  • IPFS CONFIG
  • MISCELLANEOUS
  • FILES
• Tutorials:
  • MFS API
  • Regular File API

Documentation

• Config
• Core API
• Examples
• Development
• Tutorials

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the IPFS Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -a -m 'feat: add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Want to hack on IPFS?

The IPFS implementation in JavaScript needs your help! There are a few things you can do right now to help out:

Read the Code of Conduct and JavaScript Contributing Guidelines.

• Check out existing issues The issue list has many that are marked as 'help wanted' or 'difficulty:easy' which make great starting points for development, many of which can be tackled with no prior IPFS knowledge
• Look at the IPFS Roadmap This are the high priority items being worked on right now
• Perform code reviews More eyes will help a. speed the project along b. ensure quality, and c. reduce possible future bugs.
• Add tests. There can never be enough tests.
• Join the Weekly Core Implementations Call it's where everyone discusses what's going on with IPFS and what's next