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Show HN: Ipfs-dropzone, a subclass of Dropzone.js that publishes to IPFS

109 points by fiatjaf 9y ago

proaralyst 9y ago
One thing I've failed to find out about IPFS: who pays for hosting? The user? Or is it donated by some peers?
- mbrock 9y ago
  It's just like BitTorrent.
- jstanley 9y ago
  You host anything you want to host. If nobody wants to host something it disappears.
  - rco8786 9y ago
    When you put it like that, it doesn't sound much different than how website hosting works today.
    - ashark 9y ago
      The content addressing and peer-to-peer architecture are the main differences.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      The difference is that if you decide to stop hosting, it doesn't just disappear. If there is anyone else in the world who wants it, it stays. It also means you don't need to trust the server to send you the correct content, since everything is automatically checked against its content hash. It also means it's automatically a CDN - you don't need to be able to serve every single person who wants to look at your content, because they'll all be serving it to each other.
      - DougN7 9y ago
        I'm having a hard time imagining this at scale. I have a few thousand web pages on my site, blog posts, etc. Most of it won't be seen in any given day. So I have to pin it as it's realistically unlikely anyone else will. Not much different from today. This probably describes 90% of web content out there, where a single node is all that is keeping that content alive. Now imagine something slightly more popular than my website. Maybe a particular Medium article. If it's two years old, it's unlikely to be getting any hits at this point, though it might have been popular at one time. So again, Medium has to pin it (or maybe the author would). Popular stuff would stay floating around while it's being viewed. It's almost a dynamic CDN/torrent which could help with bandwidth, but I don't see any advantage for persistence in most cases.
        biggerfisch 9y ago
        I think the advantage is that it's easier for _anyone_ to be able to keep a site/file alive without having to implement an archive.org style of rewriting all the URLs/links. If you want, you could pin that medium article you talk about and now even if the medium node(s) decide its no longer worth pinning, you've still got it pinned so it's accessible to anyone at the expected "location". Similarly, this makes take-downs harder. It's no longer one node/machine hosting a file, but as many nodes as who find it valuable. If users never pinned anything, you'd be correct, it would be basically the same as the current internet, with one organization maintaining everything. But IPFS gives you the ability to change that.
        DougN7 9y ago
        Thank you for that perspective - that makes sense. I hope there is an easy way to pin an entire site and not page-by-page so, for example, a full documentation set could be kept.
        wolfgang42 9y ago
        Yes, content on IPFS is represented as a Merkle tree so if you pin the top of the tree it will traverse down and recursively pin all of the subtrees as well. (You can, of course, pin a subtree explicitly if there's a only certain part you want.)
    - hinkley 9y ago
      I am still learning about IPFS but I participated as a minor party in the design of one of its intellectual predecessors, Freenet. IPFS is not just going to act as an ad-hoc CDN, it's also going to work as a regional CDN. If someone does a report on your funny video on WGN-TV and ten thousand Chicagoans hit your tiny little website in the next ten minutes, your server will get a few hits because nobody else has it yet. After that the network effect kicks in, and eventually everyone is loading it from an IPFS server somewhere in Chicago. When they start 'retweeting' it and everyone is looking for it, it'll end up scattered all over the country. Until people lose interest, and then the copies will begin to disappear as the next fad automatically pushes it out.
- diggan 9y ago
  Similar to with HTTP, the ones hosting the content. You'll have to access the content or explicitly pin it to share it with other peers.
  - samschooler 9y ago
    So in the case of the demo, is their server is hosting the content for 4 days?
    - reconbot 9y ago
      They seem to be using https://www.eternum.io https://www.eternum.io to "pin" the file (keep a copy of the file alive). Since eternum is a paid service they might unpin after a while but it's up to them. If they didn't do that, the file might only be available as long as your browser is open.
    - kpcyrd 9y ago
      In this case the file is served by a javascript implementation of ipfs running inside the browser over websockets. I'm not sure if the server is pinning the files as well.
    - fiatjaf 9y ago
      Yes.
- kakarot 9y ago
  You can't have dug too deep into IPFS without knowing that because it's one of the fundamental aspects of the design. Try reading their documentation. https://ipfs.io/docs/ https://ipfs.io/docs/
- wolfgang42 9y ago
  This is the #1 thing I see people confused about with IPFS. Basically, there's 3 ways for content to become available: 1. You add the files to your own node. This is how content gets added, but obviously it only lasts as long as your node is connected to the Internet, just like an ordinary HTTP server. 2. Someone views your content using their node. This causes their node to cache the content temporarily (IIRC for 30 minutes by default) and publish it to other nodes. In theory, if your content got at least one view every half hour it could live on in the users' caches forever. 3. Someone tells their node to pin your content. The node will then keep it permanently (until they unpin it) and serve it whenever it's connected to the Internet. Generally they would do this if they believe it's valuable--either because they want to keep it themselves, or as a public service to make it available to others (for example, pinning the Turkish Wikipedia to help evade censorship). There are also several pinning services, which you can pay to have them pin your content on their node, in much the same way as you'd pay a hosting provider to serve your content.
  - robto 9y ago
    In this case, it appears the node is in your browser, right? Does it go away when you close your tab? In which case your link will survive for 30 minutes, or is it just gone?
    - wolfgang42 9y ago
      It looks like ipfs-dropzone is running an in-browser node, which would go away as soon as you close the tab (since it's just a web page like any other). Content on IPFS stays available for as long as there's at least one node which has it and is connected to the network, so how long the link would survive for depends on whether other nodes have it and how long they will keep it for. If nothing else has downloaded the content then it will go away; on the other hand, if someone has pinned it then it will stay forever (or until they unpin it or go away). The 30 minute interval would apply to the IPFS gateway that someone else would use to download your content (generally a standalone process though I believe there are efforts to make a browser with an embedded gateway). IPFS nodes automatically publish their cache, effectively making an autoscaling distributed CDN. However they will only cache content that they have gotten on behalf of their user; they won't go out and pull random content from the network to host it.
- prophesi 9y ago
  This hasn't been launched yet, but IPFS is also planning to introduce their cryptocurrency, Filecoin, to offer cheap hosting. People will then host your site (aka pin it on their IPFS node) for Filecoins, which should be cheaper than traditional file storage services.
DiThi 9y ago
> I don't know how to publish this package in a way all JS transpilers and bundlers out there can understand. Please help me. Don't do this: module.exports = IPFSDropzone Do this (and change documentation accordingly) module.exports = {IPFSDropzone} or to go full ES6 do this export {IPFSDropzone}; add the package babel-env and add this script to package.json: "scripts": { "prepublish": "node node_modules/babel-cli/bin/babel *.js -d build/" }, and change main to "build/index.js". Run "npm run prepublish" to test. Edit: Now that I think of it, compiling with babel is probably unnecessary. But it doesn't hurt and can help old setups.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  Why not send a PR?
  - toddmatthews 9y ago
    teach a man to fish
    - mhluongo 9y ago
      ... the PR would do that as well
      - bringtheaction 9y ago
        Not necessarily. PR on GitHub can be merged with the push of a button so it's more likely to be looked at only cursory before getting merged and therefore will be forgotten whereas when the author needs to retype it they will have a stronger memory of it and they remember where to go back and look next time
    - hinkley 9y ago
      Give a man a fire, he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
      - 9y ago
senoroink 9y ago
Really cool demo. One suggestion is to make the dropzone more obvious. I didn't realize you had to scroll down to find the dropzone.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Thank you. I'll try to think in a better layout.
kvz 9y ago
Wondering if anybody would be up for adding this to uppy.io
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  The code is amazingly simple: https://github.com/fiatjaf/ipfs-dropzone/blob/8d7d8808ba578a265aa92e14912959c712903cc4/index.js https://github.com/fiatjaf/ipfs-dropzone/blob/8d7d8808ba578a... If someone knows where to plug into Uppy's upload function then it should be really easy.
fiatjaf 9y ago
There was someone (victorbjelkholm) talking about the zoom-out limits of https://filemap.xyz/ https://filemap.xyz/ on IRC and I couldn't reply there: I've arbitrarily imposed these limits because the purpose of the app is not for casual visitors to wander around the world browsing everybody's files, they're supposed to go to specific addresses and browse only their files there. This measure will not protect anyone absolutely, since an "attacker" can easily read the entire database and figure out where are all the files, but it protects users from 99% of the casual visitors.
zubairq 9y ago
I have to say that DropZone is supercool and this project makes a lot of sense. We also use Dropzone.js to store files and their Hash values at VisiFile. A demo is here: http://139.162.228.5/ http://139.162.228.5/ The code is here: https://github.com/zubairq/visifile/blob/master/public/index.html https://github.com/zubairq/visifile/blob/master/public/index...

109 points by fiatjaf 9y ago

proaralyst 9y ago

One thing I've failed to find out about IPFS: who pays for hosting? The user? Or is it donated by some peers?

mbrock 9y ago
It's just like BitTorrent.
jstanley 9y ago
You host anything you want to host. If nobody wants to host something it disappears.
- rco8786 9y ago
  When you put it like that, it doesn't sound much different than how website hosting works today.
  - ashark 9y ago
    The content addressing and peer-to-peer architecture are the main differences.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    The difference is that if you decide to stop hosting, it doesn't just disappear. If there is anyone else in the world who wants it, it stays. It also means you don't need to trust the server to send you the correct content, since everything is automatically checked against its content hash. It also means it's automatically a CDN - you don't need to be able to serve every single person who wants to look at your content, because they'll all be serving it to each other.
    - DougN7 9y ago
      I'm having a hard time imagining this at scale. I have a few thousand web pages on my site, blog posts, etc. Most of it won't be seen in any given day. So I have to pin it as it's realistically unlikely anyone else will. Not much different from today. This probably describes 90% of web content out there, where a single node is all that is keeping that content alive. Now imagine something slightly more popular than my website. Maybe a particular Medium article. If it's two years old, it's unlikely to be getting any hits at this point, though it might have been popular at one time. So again, Medium has to pin it (or maybe the author would). Popular stuff would stay floating around while it's being viewed. It's almost a dynamic CDN/torrent which could help with bandwidth, but I don't see any advantage for persistence in most cases.
      - biggerfisch 9y ago
        I think the advantage is that it's easier for _anyone_ to be able to keep a site/file alive without having to implement an archive.org style of rewriting all the URLs/links. If you want, you could pin that medium article you talk about and now even if the medium node(s) decide its no longer worth pinning, you've still got it pinned so it's accessible to anyone at the expected "location". Similarly, this makes take-downs harder. It's no longer one node/machine hosting a file, but as many nodes as who find it valuable. If users never pinned anything, you'd be correct, it would be basically the same as the current internet, with one organization maintaining everything. But IPFS gives you the ability to change that.
        DougN7 9y ago
        Thank you for that perspective - that makes sense. I hope there is an easy way to pin an entire site and not page-by-page so, for example, a full documentation set could be kept.
        wolfgang42 9y ago
        Yes, content on IPFS is represented as a Merkle tree so if you pin the top of the tree it will traverse down and recursively pin all of the subtrees as well. (You can, of course, pin a subtree explicitly if there's a only certain part you want.)
  - hinkley 9y ago
    I am still learning about IPFS but I participated as a minor party in the design of one of its intellectual predecessors, Freenet. IPFS is not just going to act as an ad-hoc CDN, it's also going to work as a regional CDN. If someone does a report on your funny video on WGN-TV and ten thousand Chicagoans hit your tiny little website in the next ten minutes, your server will get a few hits because nobody else has it yet. After that the network effect kicks in, and eventually everyone is loading it from an IPFS server somewhere in Chicago. When they start 'retweeting' it and everyone is looking for it, it'll end up scattered all over the country. Until people lose interest, and then the copies will begin to disappear as the next fad automatically pushes it out.
diggan 9y ago
Similar to with HTTP, the ones hosting the content. You'll have to access the content or explicitly pin it to share it with other peers.
- samschooler 9y ago
  So in the case of the demo, is their server is hosting the content for 4 days?
  - reconbot 9y ago
    They seem to be using https://www.eternum.io https://www.eternum.io to "pin" the file (keep a copy of the file alive). Since eternum is a paid service they might unpin after a while but it's up to them. If they didn't do that, the file might only be available as long as your browser is open.
  - kpcyrd 9y ago
    In this case the file is served by a javascript implementation of ipfs running inside the browser over websockets. I'm not sure if the server is pinning the files as well.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    Yes.
kakarot 9y ago
You can't have dug too deep into IPFS without knowing that because it's one of the fundamental aspects of the design. Try reading their documentation. https://ipfs.io/docs/ https://ipfs.io/docs/
wolfgang42 9y ago
This is the #1 thing I see people confused about with IPFS. Basically, there's 3 ways for content to become available: 1. You add the files to your own node. This is how content gets added, but obviously it only lasts as long as your node is connected to the Internet, just like an ordinary HTTP server. 2. Someone views your content using their node. This causes their node to cache the content temporarily (IIRC for 30 minutes by default) and publish it to other nodes. In theory, if your content got at least one view every half hour it could live on in the users' caches forever. 3. Someone tells their node to pin your content. The node will then keep it permanently (until they unpin it) and serve it whenever it's connected to the Internet. Generally they would do this if they believe it's valuable--either because they want to keep it themselves, or as a public service to make it available to others (for example, pinning the Turkish Wikipedia to help evade censorship). There are also several pinning services, which you can pay to have them pin your content on their node, in much the same way as you'd pay a hosting provider to serve your content.
- robto 9y ago
  In this case, it appears the node is in your browser, right? Does it go away when you close your tab? In which case your link will survive for 30 minutes, or is it just gone?
  - wolfgang42 9y ago
    It looks like ipfs-dropzone is running an in-browser node, which would go away as soon as you close the tab (since it's just a web page like any other). Content on IPFS stays available for as long as there's at least one node which has it and is connected to the network, so how long the link would survive for depends on whether other nodes have it and how long they will keep it for. If nothing else has downloaded the content then it will go away; on the other hand, if someone has pinned it then it will stay forever (or until they unpin it or go away). The 30 minute interval would apply to the IPFS gateway that someone else would use to download your content (generally a standalone process though I believe there are efforts to make a browser with an embedded gateway). IPFS nodes automatically publish their cache, effectively making an autoscaling distributed CDN. However they will only cache content that they have gotten on behalf of their user; they won't go out and pull random content from the network to host it.
prophesi 9y ago
This hasn't been launched yet, but IPFS is also planning to introduce their cryptocurrency, Filecoin, to offer cheap hosting. People will then host your site (aka pin it on their IPFS node) for Filecoins, which should be cheaper than traditional file storage services.

DiThi 9y ago

> I don't know how to publish this package in a way all JS transpilers and bundlers out there can understand. Please help me. Don't do this: module.exports = IPFSDropzone Do this (and change documentation accordingly) module.exports = {IPFSDropzone} or to go full ES6 do this export {IPFSDropzone}; add the package babel-env and add this script to package.json: "scripts": { "prepublish": "node node_modules/babel-cli/bin/babel *.js -d build/" }, and change main to "build/index.js". Run "npm run prepublish" to test. Edit: Now that I think of it, compiling with babel is probably unnecessary. But it doesn't hurt and can help old setups.

SEJeff 9y ago
Why not send a PR?
- toddmatthews 9y ago
  teach a man to fish
  - mhluongo 9y ago
    ... the PR would do that as well
    - bringtheaction 9y ago
      Not necessarily. PR on GitHub can be merged with the push of a button so it's more likely to be looked at only cursory before getting merged and therefore will be forgotten whereas when the author needs to retype it they will have a stronger memory of it and they remember where to go back and look next time
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Give a man a fire, he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
    - 9y ago

senoroink 9y ago

Really cool demo. One suggestion is to make the dropzone more obvious. I didn't realize you had to scroll down to find the dropzone.

fiatjaf 9y ago
Thank you. I'll try to think in a better layout.

kvz 9y ago

Wondering if anybody would be up for adding this to uppy.io

fiatjaf 9y ago
The code is amazingly simple: https://github.com/fiatjaf/ipfs-dropzone/blob/8d7d8808ba578a265aa92e14912959c712903cc4/index.js https://github.com/fiatjaf/ipfs-dropzone/blob/8d7d8808ba578a... If someone knows where to plug into Uppy's upload function then it should be really easy.

fiatjaf 9y ago

There was someone (victorbjelkholm) talking about the zoom-out limits of https://filemap.xyz/ https://filemap.xyz/ on IRC and I couldn't reply there: I've arbitrarily imposed these limits because the purpose of the app is not for casual visitors to wander around the world browsing everybody's files, they're supposed to go to specific addresses and browse only their files there. This measure will not protect anyone absolutely, since an "attacker" can easily read the entire database and figure out where are all the files, but it protects users from 99% of the casual visitors.

zubairq 9y ago

I have to say that DropZone is supercool and this project makes a lot of sense. We also use Dropzone.js to store files and their Hash values at VisiFile. A demo is here: http://139.162.228.5/ http://139.162.228.5/ The code is here: https://github.com/zubairq/visifile/blob/master/public/index.html https://github.com/zubairq/visifile/blob/master/public/index...