@polywrap/ipfs-http-client-lite

A lightweight JavaScript HTTP client library for IPFS.

An alternative client library for the IPFS HTTP API, aiming to be as lightweight as possible (<20KB) in the browser.

Lead Maintainer

Install
Usage
Contribute
License

Install

This module requires Node.js and npm to install:

npm install --save ipfs-http-client-lite

We support both the Current and Active LTS versions of Node.js. Please see nodejs.org for what these currently are.

Usage

Running the daemon with the right port

To interact with the API, you need to have a local daemon running. It needs to be open on the right port. 5001 is the default, and is used in the examples below, but it can be set to whatever you need.

# Show the ipfs config API port to check it is correct
> ipfs config Addresses.API
/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001
# Set it if it does not match the above output
> ipfs config Addresses.API /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001
# Restart the daemon after changing the config

# Run the daemon
> ipfs daemon

CORS

In a web browser IPFS HTTP client (either browserified or CDN-based) might encounter an error saying that the origin is not allowed. This would be a CORS ("Cross Origin Resource Sharing") failure: IPFS servers are designed to reject requests from unknown domains by default. You can whitelist the domain that you are calling from by changing your ipfs config like this:

$ ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Origin  '["http://example.com"]'
$ ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Methods '["PUT", "POST", "GET"]'

Custom HTTP Headers

If you wish to send custom headers with each request made by this library, for example, the Authorization header. You can use the config to do so:

const ipfs = IpfsHttpClientLite({
  apiUrl: 'http://localhost:5001',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer ' + TOKEN
  }
})

Importing

const IpfsHttpClientLite = require('ipfs-http-client-lite')

// Connect to ipfs daemon HTTP API server
const ipfs = IpfsHttpClientLite('http://localhost:5001')
// Note: leaving out the argument will default to this value

For ultra small bundle size, import just the methods you need. e.g.

const cat = require('ipfs-http-client-lite/src/cat')('http://localhost:5001')
const data = await cat('QmQeEyDPA47GqnduyVVWNdnj6UBPXYPVWogAQoqmAcLx6y')

In a web browser

Bundling

This module can be bundled with webpack and browserify and should be compatible with most other bundlers.

CDN

Instead of a local installation (and bundling) you may request a remote copy of the IPFS HTTP API client from unpkg CDN.

To always request the latest version, use the following:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/ipfs-http-client-lite/dist/index.min.js"></script>

You can also use the un-minified version, just remove ".min" from the URL.

For maximum security you may also decide to:

Reference a specific version of the IPFS HTTP API client (to prevent unexpected breaking changes when a newer latest version is published)
Generate a SRI hash of that version and use it to ensure integrity
Set the CORS settings attribute to make anonymous requests to CDN

Example:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/ipfs-http-client-lite@1.0.0/dist/index.js"
integrity="sha384-5bXRcW9kyxxnSMbOoHzraqa7Z0PQWIao+cgeg327zit1hz5LZCEbIMx/LWKPReuB"
crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

The CDN-based IPFS HTTP API provides the IpfsHttpClientLite constructor as a property of the global window object. Example:

const ipfs = window.IpfsHttpClientLite('http://localhost:5001')

If you omit the URL, the client will parse window.location.host, and use this information. This also works, and can be useful if you want to write apps that can be run from multiple different gateways:

const ipfs = window.IpfsHttpClientLite()

API

This module is in heavy development, not all API methods are available (or documented) yet!

IpfsHttpClientLite
add
addFromFs
addFromStream TODO: add docs
addFromURL TODO: add docs
addPullStream
bitswap.stat TODO: add docs
bitswap.wantlist TODO: add docs
block.get
block.put
block.stat
bootstrap.add
bootstrap.list
bootstrap.rm
cat
catPullStream TODO: add docs
config.get
config.replace
config.set
dag.get
dag.put
dag.tree
dht.findPeer
dht.findProvs
dht.get
dht.provide
dht.put
dht.query
dns
files.cp
files.flush
files.ls
files.lsPullStream
files.mkdir
files.mv
files.read
files.readPullStream
files.rm
files.stat
files.write
id TODO: add docs
key.export
key.gen
key.import
key.list
key.rename
key.rm
ls TODO: add docs
lsPullStream TODO: add docs
name.pubsub.cancel
name.pubsub.state
name.pubsub.subs
object.data
object.get
object.links
object.new
object.patch.addLink
object.patch.appendData
object.patch.rmLink
object.patch.setData
object.put
pin.add
pin.ls
pin.rm
ping TODO: add docs
pingPullStream TODO: add docs
pubsub.ls
pubsub.peers
pubsub.publish
pubsub.subscribe
pubsub.unsubscribe
refs
refsPullStream
refs.local
refs.localPullStream
repo.gc
repo.stat
repo.version
resolve
shutdown
stats.bitswap
stats.bw
stats.bwPullStream
stats.repo
swarm.addrs
swarm.connect
swarm.disconnect
swarm.localAddrs
swarm.peers
version TODO: add docs

Note: All API methods are documented using Promises/async/await but they also accept a callback as their last parameter.

Testing

We run tests by executing npm test in a terminal window. This will run both Node.js and Browser tests, both in Chrome and PhantomJS. To ensure that the module conforms with the interface-ipfs-core spec, we run the batch of tests provided by the interface module, which can be found here.

Contribute

Feel free to dive in! Open an issue or submit PRs.

Want to hack on IPFS?

License

Dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and MIT terms:

Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)