p2panda-js

All the things a panda needs (for JavaScript)

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This library provides all tools required to write a client, node or even your own protocol implementation for the p2panda network. It is shipped both as a Rust crate p2panda-rs with WebAssembly bindings and a NPM package p2panda-js with TypeScript definitions running in NodeJS or any modern web browser.

In the future p2panda-js will have full feature parity with p2panda-rs to be able to write high-level client frameworks or node implementations in TypeScript. Until now p2panda-js provides basic methods to create, sign and encode data.

The core p2panda specification is fully functional but still under review so please be prepared for breaking API changes until we reach v1.0. Currently no p2panda implementation has recieved a security audit.

Installation

To install p2panda-js run:

npm i p2panda-js

Example

import { KeyPair, signAndEncodeEntry, encodeOperation } from 'p2panda-js';

// Id of the schema which describes the data we want to publish. This should
// already be known to the node we are publishing to.
const SCHEMA_ID =
  'profile_0020c65567ae37efea293e34a9c7d13f8f2bf23dbdc3b5c7b9ab46293111c48fc78b';

// Generate new Ed25519 key pair.
const keyPair = new KeyPair();

// Add field data to "create" operation and encode it.
const operation = encodeOperation({
  schemaId: SCHEMA_ID,
  fields: {
    username: 'Panda',
  },
});

// Create Bamboo entry (append-only log data type) with operation as payload
// and encode it.
const entry = signAndEncodeEntry({ operation }, keyPair);

console.log(entry, operation);

Usage

p2panda-js runs both in NodeJS and web browsers and comes as a ES, CommonJS or UMD module. It can easily be integrated into Webpack, Rollup or other tools.

Since p2panda-js contains WebAssembly code, it is necessary to initialise it before using the methods in the Browser. This initialisation step is not required in NodeJS contexts.

To make this step a little bit easier p2panda-js inlines the WebAssembly code as a base64 string which gets decoded automatically during initialisation. For manual initialisation the package also comes with "slim" versions where you need to provide a path to the ".wasm" file yourself, you can read about this approach further below.

NodeJS

import { KeyPair } from 'p2panda-js';
const keyPair = new KeyPair();
console.log(keyPair.publicKey());

Browser

To quickly get started you can run p2panda-js in any modern browser as an ES module like that:

<script type="module">
  import { initWebAssembly, KeyPair } from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/p2panda-js@0.8.1/lib/esm/index.min.js';

  // This only needs to be done once before using all `p2panda-js` methods.
  initWebAssembly().then(() => {
    const keyPair = new KeyPair();
    console.log(keyPair.publicKey());
  });
</script>

Or use the "slim" version if you want to provide the ".wasm" file manually:

<script type="module">
  import { initWebAssembly, KeyPair } from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/p2panda-js@0.8.1/lib/esm-slim/index.min.js';

  // Pass external .wasm file manually for smaller file sizes
  const wasmFile = 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/p2panda-js@0.8.1/lib/p2panda.wasm';
  initWebAssembly(wasmFile).then(() => {
    const keyPair = new KeyPair();
    console.log(keyPair.publicKey());
  });
</script>

Bundlers

import { initWebAssembly, KeyPair } from 'p2panda-js';

// This only needs to be done once before using all `p2panda-js` methods.
await initWebAssembly();

const keyPair = new KeyPair();
console.log(keyPair.publicKey());

Manually load .wasm

Running p2panda-js in the browser automatically inlines the WebAssembly inside the JavaScript file, encoded as a base64 string. While this works for most developers, it also doubles the size of the imported file. To avoid larger payloads and decoding times you can load the .wasm file manually by using a "slim" version. For this you need to initialise the module by passing the path to the file into initWebAssembly:

// Import from `slim` module to manually initialise WebAssembly code
import { initWebAssembly, KeyPair } from 'p2panda-js/slim';
import wasm from 'p2panda-js/p2panda.wasm';

// When running p2panda in the browser, this method needs to run once
// before using all other `p2panda-js` methods
await initWebAssembly(wasm);

const keyPair = new KeyPair();
console.log(keyPair.publicKey());

Development

Dependencies

• NodeJS
• Rust
• wasm-bindgen
• wasm-opt
• wasm32-unknown-unknown compilation target for rustup

In order to develop with the current code base p2panda-js needs to be compiled from the p2panda-rs code using wasm-bindgen. This requires a working Rust environment to be setup and wasm-bindgen to be installed. wasm-opt is only required to optimize the WebAssembly builds for production via npm run build. You can then run the following commands, the compilation occurs during the testing and build phases:

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Check code formatting
npm run lint

# Run tests, requires `wasm-bindgen`
npm test

# Compile wasm and bundle js package, requires `wasm-bindgen` and `wasm-opt`
npm run build

Documentation

# Generate documentation
npm run docs

# Show documentation in browser
npx serve ./docs

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 AGPL-3.0-or-later

Supported by

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the framework of the NGI-POINTER Project funded under grant agreement No 871528 and NGI-ASSURE No 957073