bitswap

go-bitswap

An implementation of the bitswap protocol in go!

Table of Contents

• Background
• Usage
• Implementation
• Contribute
• License

Background

Bitswap is the data trading module for ipfs. It manages requesting and sending blocks to and from other peers in the network. Bitswap has two main jobs:

• to acquire blocks requested by the client from the network
• to judiciously send blocks in its possession to other peers who want them

Bitswap is a message based protocol, as opposed to request-response. All messages contain wantlists or blocks.

A node sends a wantlist to tell peers which blocks it wants. When a node receives a wantlist it should check which blocks it has from the wantlist, and consider sending the matching blocks to the requestor.

When a node receives blocks that it asked for, the node should send out a notification called a 'Cancel' to tell its peers that the node no longer wants those blocks.

go-bitswap provides an implementation of the Bitswap protocol in go.

Learn more about how Bitswap works

Usage

Initializing a Bitswap Exchange

import (
  "context"
  bitswap "github.com/sevenrats/boxo/bitswap"
  bsnet "github.com/sevenrats/boxo/bitswap/network"
  blockstore "github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs-blockstore"
  "github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-core/routing"
  "github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-core/host"
)

var ctx context.Context
var host host.Host
var router routing.ContentRouting
var bstore blockstore.Blockstore

network := bsnet.NewFromIpfsHost(host, router)
exchange := bitswap.New(ctx, network, bstore)

Parameter Notes:

1. ctx is just the parent context for all of Bitswap
2. network is a network abstraction provided to Bitswap on top of libp2p & content routing.
3. bstore is an IPFS blockstore

Get A Block Synchronously

var c cid.Cid
var ctx context.Context
var exchange bitswap.Bitswap

block, err := exchange.GetBlock(ctx, c)

Parameter Notes:

1. ctx is the context for this request, which can be cancelled to cancel the request
2. c is the content ID of the block you're requesting

Get Several Blocks Asynchronously

var cids []cid.Cid
var ctx context.Context
var exchange bitswap.Bitswap

blockChannel, err := exchange.GetBlocks(ctx, cids)

Parameter Notes:

1. ctx is the context for this request, which can be cancelled to cancel the request
2. cids is a slice of content IDs for the blocks you're requesting

Get Related Blocks Faster With Sessions

In IPFS, content blocks are often connected to each other through a MerkleDAG. If you know ahead of time that block requests are related, Bitswap can make several optimizations internally in how it requests those blocks in order to get them faster. Bitswap provides a mechanism called a Bitswap Session to manage a series of block requests as part of a single higher level operation. You should initialize a Bitswap Session any time you intend to make a series of block requests that are related -- and whose responses are likely to come from the same peers.

var ctx context.Context
var cids []cids.cid
var exchange bitswap.Bitswap

session := exchange.NewSession(ctx)
blocksChannel, err := session.GetBlocks(ctx, cids)
// later
var relatedCids []cids.cid
relatedBlocksChannel, err := session.GetBlocks(ctx, relatedCids)

Note that NewSession returns an interface with GetBlock and GetBlocks methods that have the same signature as the overall Bitswap exchange.

Tell bitswap a new block was added to the local datastore

var blk blocks.Block
var exchange bitswap.Bitswap

err := exchange.HasBlock(blk)