How can IPFS deal with the latest version of a datum?

[piotr-yuxuan]

First, thank you for IPFS, it seems to be a definitely fun and perhaps promising idea :-)

Any document is dynamic most of the time: its URL can change and so can its content itself. IPFS hashes solves the first part but how can we retrieve the latest available version of a document?

To the best of my knowledge, tree-based version control system (such as git) makes it trivial to access to parents of a document but further revisions are less easily accessible.

[leroycep]

The IPNS (InterPlanetary Name Space) solves the issue of accessing the latest document. It is described near the end of the IPFS white paper.

Every user is assigned a namespace at /ipns/<NodeId>. Then a user can put new files at places underneath this, like /ipns/<NodeId>/cat.gif, which would link to a IPFS content address in its metadata.

[fasiha]

Here’s a tidy summary how people accomplish this: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdPtC3T7Kcu9iJg6hYzLBWR5XCDcYMY7HV685E3kH3EcS/2015/09/15/hosting-a-website-on-ipfs/ 😊

[piotr-yuxuan]

Great thank you for your explanations, I can close it.

[RichardLitt]

Let's keep this open to make it more easily searchable. Adding the answered label. :)

[madavieb]

This issue has been moved to https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/how-can-ipfs-deal-with-the-latest-version-of-a-datum/305.