ipfs/ipfs-companion

Automatic mirroring of HTTP websites to IPFS as you browse them

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#535 opened on Jul 19, 2018

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 (11 comments) (2 reactions) (0 assignees)JavaScript (364 forks)batch import
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Description

By design IPFS provides excellent caching and accelerating mechanism. It would be nice to use IPFS as HTTP accelerator. Obviously, it might be used for static files only.

My proposal is as follows:

  1. Create secure hash storing website "IPFS2HTTP". It would store URL, IPFS hash, expiration time. 1.1 Have api to get URL and return IPFS hash, expiration time 1.2 Have "workers" to retrieve unknown or expired URLs, add it to IPFS and keep hash in internal db.
  2. Add to ipfs-companion option to enable "http2ipfs" translation, in following way: 2.1 For each never-seen-before URL do this (with 5s timeout): 2.1.1 Go to the "IPFS2HTTP" site, pass the URL, see if it has hash for the URL. Get the hash, fetch it over IPFS, return to user. Fall back to HTTP if no such hash. 2.2. If URL already seen - check its time to live (as received from IPFS2HTTP site) and use IPFS hash if possible. Otherwise retrieve new hash as in 2.1.1

Initially we might use the acceleration for obviously static files, such as .iso, .mp3, images...

I volunteer to do the part 1. Can you help with 2? What do you think?

Contributor guide

Research direction
Study the ipfs companion source code to understand how URL interception and IPFS resolution currently work. Implement a mechanism to query an external API (IPFS2HTTP) for cached IPFS hashes of HTTP URLs and fall back to direct HTTP if not found.
Tech stack
javascript
Domain
frontend
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Mostly clear
Prerequisites
JavaScriptBrowser Extension DevelopmentIPFS Concepts
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
50