IPFS: What and How

What is it?

It’s a p2p file upload and share protocol/software.

It uses blockchain technology. So it can’t be shut down except in China or North Korea.

It also has the garbage collection feature, which means, if nobody ever visits and caches your content, your content will be deleted forever from the internet after a period of time.

The more people visit and cache your content, the quicker speed you will get when someone requests your content.

https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/whenever-i-upload-a-file-does-all-my-connected-peers-cache-that-immediately/10467

How to use it? 

After a lot of research, finally I got it.

for generals

What you do is to download an ipfs-desktop app, then run it, then upload your file, that’s it. (you can get a shareable URL I guess)

https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/releases

for HTTP API tester

https://www.npmjs.com/package/ipfs-http-client

http://docs.ipfs.io.ipns.localhost:8080/reference/http/api/#getting-started

for programmers

I found that they have a library for backend programmers. Either for node/golang.

They call their library ‘ipfs-core interface’. All you have to do is import and use it. By doing so, you can have the IPFS embedded into your final software.

Node.js:

https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs#install-as-an-application-developer

Golang:
https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/core/coreapi

Author

yingshaoxo

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