js-libp2p-identify

libp2p Identify Protocol

Lead Maintainer

Jacob Heun

Description

Identify is a STUN protocol, used by libp2p-swarm in order to broadcast and learn about the ip:port pairs a specific peer is available through and to know when a new stream muxer is established, so a conn can be reused.

How does it work

Best way to understand the current design is through this issue: https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-swarm/issues/78

This module uses pull-streams

We expose a streaming interface based on pull-streams, rather then on the Node.js core streams implementation (aka Node.js streams). pull-streams offers us a better mechanism for error handling and flow control guarantees. If you would like to know more about why we did this, see the discussion at this issue.

You can learn more about pull-streams at:

• The history of Node.js streams, nodebp April 2014
• The history of streams, 2016
• pull-streams, the simple streaming primitive
• pull-streams documentation

Converting pull-streams to Node.js Streams

If you are a Node.js streams user, you can convert a pull-stream to a Node.js stream using the module pull-stream-to-stream, giving you an instance of a Node.js stream that is linked to the pull-stream. For example:

const pullToStream = require('pull-stream-to-stream')

const nodeStreamInstance = pullToStream(pullStreamInstance)
// nodeStreamInstance is an instance of a Node.js Stream

To learn more about this utility, visit https://pull-stream.github.io/#pull-stream-to-stream.