Browser friendly ipfs.js light
This is meant to implement the most common use cases for using ipfs in a browser. It has zero dependencies.
It meant to be mostly compatible with ipfs.js with a few key differences:
- no specific support for Buffers. Buffer's still work, see caveat below in documentation for ipfs.cat
- only implements simple add and cat functionality
- Basically if you're using ipfs as a simple KV store, this should do the trick
Run npm install browser-ipfs
Or reference dist/ipfs.min.js inside a <script /> to expose the global ipfs
Example
1) Set IPFS CORS access
ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Origin '["*"]'
ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Methods '["PUT", "GET", "POST"]'
ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Credentials '["true"]'
2) Start IPFS
ipfs daemon
3) Upload example directory
git clone https://github.com/ConsenSys/ipfs.js && cd ipfs.js
For non-default ipfs configurations, you can run ./example.url to ipfs add -r example and print the local gateway's url
4) Open IPFS gateway
Navigate to the url echoed from ./example.url in the browser, or run ./example.url | xargs open to open it on OSX
Methods
ipfs.setProvider({host: 'localhost', port: '5001'})
- localhost and 5001 are the defaults when calling without arguments
- is also equivalent to
ipfs.setProvider({host: '/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001'})
ipfs.setProvider(require('ipfs-api')('localhost', '5001'))
ipfs.add(stringOrBuffer, callback)
ipfs.add("Testing...", function(err, hash) {
if (err) throw err; // If connection is closed
console.log(hash); // "Qmc7CrwGJvRyCYZZU64aPawPj7CJ56vyBxdhxa38Dh1aKt"
});
ipfs.cat(hash, callback)
Since we want to avoid including Buffer as a specific dependency. You need to manually convert the data returned from cat to a Buffer if that is what you're expecting.
ipfs.cat("Qmc7CrwGJvRyCYZZU64aPawPj7CJ56vyBxdhxa38Dh1aKt", function(err, data) { if (err) throw err; console.log(new Buffer(data,'binary').toString()); // "Testing..." });
ipfs.catText(hash, callback)
ipfs.cat("Qmc7CrwGJvRyCYZZU64aPawPj7CJ56vyBxdhxa38Dh1aKt", function(err, text) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(text); // "Testing..."
});
new buffer.Buffer(data, 'binary')