axis

Axis (Axis Pinning Service)

IPFS pinning service written in Go.

Axis is an Open Source IPFS (Interplanetary File System) pinning service and implements the IPFS Pinning Service API. It acts as a persistent backup for distributed content. The current implementation depends on Redis as a centralized database for the service's "Pins". Currently users are not yet defined, meaning pins are not owned by anyone but the service.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Install
• Usage
• License

Background

This project was created as an open example of an implementation of the IPFS pinning service API. Prior to the project's development, it was difficult to find one. Therefore (at the time) it made sense to make one. A pinning service acts as a persistent IPFS node(s) for managing distributed content. Content includes files and directories; thus the "File System" part of IPFS.

At a high-level the service looks like the following:

There are 4 main components. They are:

1. Pins
   The entrypoint into the service that manages the Pins. Allowing Pins to be retrieved, created, updated, patched, and removed.
2. Pinner
   Responsible for adding and removing Pins.
3. Pin Watcher*
   Watches for Pin status changes in the IPFS cluster. For example, when a file is pinned or unpinned.
4. Redis
   A centralized repository for tracking Pins and their meta-data. The RediSearch module is required. See redisedge for reference.

* Planned to be refactored to include background saving for persistance between service downtime.

The HTTP API documentation can be found here. The project includes a PUT endpoint to replace Pin objects in addition to the specification's POST action. Authentication is verified via an authentication token. Where an Auth service is expected to have a path to /.well-known/jwks.json for token validation. For reference, see the jwk package of simplejwt.

Install

Installation can be done via the Makefile. By default the pins executable is installed under /go/bin but can be changed by setting GOBIN.

Build and install the pins service under the present working directory
$ (export GOBIN=$(pwd) && cd cmd/pins/ && make -f ../../Makefile build)

Furthermore, a Dockerfile has been written. To build the Docker image, run:

$ docker build -t crossedbot/axis -f deployments/docker/pins.Dockerfile .

Usage

Usage of pins:
  -config-file string
        path to configuration file (default "~/.axis/config.toml")

A Bash script has been written for further abstraction:

run.bash [-h] [-c <configuration>] [-d <database address>]
    [-i <ipfs address>] [-p <port>] -- program to start an Axis service
where:
    -a  set authenticator address; default is 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/.well-known/jwks.json'
    -c  configuration file location; default is '${HOME}/.axis/axis.toml'
    -d  set database address; default is '127.0.0.1:6379'
    -h  show this help text
    -i  set IPFS cluster multi-address; default is '/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9094'
    -p  set listening port of HTTP API; default is 7070"
    exit

License

MIT © crossedbot