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Helia Documentation

repository·main·Indexed 23 days ago

https://github.com/ipfs/helia

A lean, modular, and modern TypeScript implementation of IPFS designed for JavaScript and browser environments. The project includes core IPFS functionality and specialized packages such as @helia/bitswap for the Bitswap protocol, @helia/car for importing and exporting CAR files, and @helia/dag-cbor for DAG-CBOR data blocks.

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What's inside Helia

  1. Overview of @helia/bitswap

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    @helia/bitswap is a TypeScript implementation of the Bitswap protocol. It is designed to be a modern replacement for the older ipfs-bitswap module, offering a smaller footprint, faster performance, better integration with libp2p and helia, fewer dependencies, and a reliance on standard JavaScript instead of Node.js-specific APIs.

  2. Overview of Helia's purpose and target environments

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    Helia is a focused, modular, and opinionated JavaScript-native implementation of the IPFS (Interplanetary File System) protocol. It is written in TypeScript/JavaScript and is designed to run in a wide variety of environments, including:

    • Web browsers
    • Service workers
    • Browser extensions
    • Node.js
    • Virtually any environment where JavaScript can execute.

  5. What is @helia/fallback-router?

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    @helia/fallback-router is a Helia router that yields hard-coded providers.

    It enables Helia to fallback to using a trustless gateway to fetch content from peers that support transports not available in the current Helia environment. For example, it allows browser-based peers to fetch content from network nodes that only support TCP or QUIC connections.

  6. Interpret transport benchmark results

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    When analyzing the benchmark results:

    • Lower numbers are better: The metrics represent performance costs (e.g., time or resources).
    • Direction of transfer: The legend arrow indicates the flow of data. For example, helia -> kubo represents a workflow where ipfs.add is executed on Helia and ipfs.pin is executed on Kubo to pull that data from Helia.

  7. Understand transfer benchmark results and directionality

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    When interpreting the benchmark results and generated graphs:

    • Metric Direction: Lower numbers indicate better performance.
    • Transfer Direction: The legend arrow indicates the direction of data transfer. For example, helia -> kubo represents a workflow where:
      1. ipfs.add is executed on Helia.
      2. ipfs.cat is executed on Kubo, which pulls the data from Helia.

  8. Understand Helia's modular architecture

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    Helia is designed to be modular, allowing developers to mix and match different implementations of the Helia API.

    Core implementations include:

    • @packages/helia: A peer-to-peer implementation using Bitswap, libp2p, and HTTP gateways as fallback.
    • @packages/http: A lightweight implementation using HTTP gateways exclusively.

    Users can extend functionality by adding supplemental libraries such as @helia/dag-cbor, @helia/dag-json, @helia/unixfs, and others to suit their specific application needs.

  9. Delegated Routing via HTTP Routing v1

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    For applications that need to delegate routing (rather than performing DHT queries directly from a browser), Helia supports the HTTP Routing v1 protocol.

    While this protocol uses HTTP as a transport, it is a specified standard and is not tied to the Kubo RPC API. Developers can configure HTTP Routing v1 endpoints to handle delegated routing tasks.

  12. Use @helia/strings via Browser `<script>` tag

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    You can load @helia/strings directly in the browser using a script tag. The module's exports will be available under the global HeliaStrings namespace.

    <script src="https://unpkg.com/@helia/strings/dist/index.min.js"></script>