HTTP api on top of ipfs crate. The end binary has some rudimentary ipfs CLI functionality but mostly in the aim of testing the rust-ipfs via:

• conformance
• interop

The vision for this crate is to eventually provide warp filters and async methods suitable to providing the Ipfs HTTP API in other applications as well instead of having to write application specific debug and introspection APIs.

HTTP specs:

• https://docs.ipfs.io/reference/http/api/

Status: Pre-alpha, most of the functionality is missing or 501 Not Implemented. See the repository level README for more information.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to run a rust-ipfs node using the ipfs-http crate. If you haven't already, you'll need to install Rust. You should also install the go-ipfs CLI as this will make it easier to interact with the node.

By default ipfs-http stores the configuration for the node in the .rust-ipfs directory. Should you want to override this, you can do so by setting the IPFS_PATH environment variable. For this example it's a good idea to set the path to .rust-ipfs so that the go-ipfs CLI knows to use that directory as well (default is .ipfs).

You can initialise the directory with:

cargo run -p ipfs-http -- init --profile test --bits 2048

The --profile option allows the user to use a set of defaults. Currently two profiles are supported:

• test: runs the daemon using ephemeral ports
• default runs the daemon on port 4004

The --bits option specifies the length of the RSA keys to be used. The output should return a peer id and confirm the path of the newly initialised node is either the default or the IPFS_PATH.

The .rust-ipfs directory now contains a configuration file, config:

{
  "Identity": {
    "PeerID": "QmTETy4bmL44fwkvbkMzXMVmiUDTvEcupsfpM8BCgNERUe",
    "PrivKey": "CAASpgkwggSiAgEAAoIBAQCyFR6pKSRt62WLJ6fi2MeG0pn [...]" 
  },
  "Addresses": {
    "Swarm": [
      "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/0"
    ]
  }
}

It stores the peer id, private key (shortened for brevity) and swarm addresses for the node. Let's run the node as a daemon:

cargo run -p ipfs-http -- daemon

This exposes the node as an HTTP API. The config directory has also grown to include a blockstore, a datastore and an api file:

.rust-ipfs
├── api
├── blockstore
├── config
└── datastore
    └── pins

The blockstore and datastore are empty, as we haven't yet added any data to the ipfs node. The api file keeps track of the node's address.

The node can now be queried using the go-ipfs CLI. In another terminal window run:

ipfs id

This returns the information about the node.

{
	"ID": "QmTETy4bmL44fwkvbkMzXMVmiUDTvEcupsfpM8BCgNERUe",
	"PublicKey": "CAASpgIwggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3D [...]",
	"Addresses": [
		"/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/58807/p2p/QmTETy4bmL44fwkvbkMzXMVmiUDTvEcupsfpM8BCgNERUe"
	],
	"AgentVersion": "rust-ipfs/version",
	"ProtocolVersion": "ipfs/version",
	"Protocols": null
}

The query is logged by the node and shows the /api/v0/id endpoint handled the request:

INFO ipfs-http: 127.0.0.1:58811 "POST /api/v0/id HTTP/1.1" 200 "-" "go-ipfs-cmds/http" 2.795971ms