bitswarm-web

Implementation of the bitswarm API for use in web browsers

Using in an application

npm i -s @web4/bitswarm-web

// Based on example in bitswarm repo
// Try running the regular bitswarm demo with node
const bitswarm = require('@web4/bitswarm-web')
const crypto = require('crypto')

const swarm = bitswarm({
  // Specify a server list of BitswarmServer instances
  bootstrap: ['ws://yourbitswarmserver.com'],
  // You can also specify proxy and signal servers separated
  wsProxy: [
    'ws://proxy1.com',
    'ws://proxy2.com'
  ],
  webrtcBootstrap: [
    'ws://signal1.com',
    'ws://signal2.com'
  ],
  // The configuration passed to the SimplePeer constructor
  // See https://github.com/feross/simple-peer#peer--new-peeropts
  // for more options
  simplePeer: {
    // The configuration passed to the RTCPeerConnection constructor, for more details see
    // https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/RTCPeerConnection/RTCPeerConnection#RTCConfiguration_dictionary
    config: {
      // List of STUN and TURN servers to connect
      // Without the connection is limited to local peers
      iceServers: require('./ice-servers.json')
    }
  },
  // Maximum number of peers (optional)
  // Used in both webrtc (default 5) and ws proxy config (default 24)
  maxPeers: 10,
  // Websocket reconnect delay in milliseconds (optional) (default 1000)
  wsReconnectDelay: 5000
})

// look for peers listed under this topic
const topic = crypto.createHash('sha256')
  .update('my-bitswarm-topic')
  .digest()

swarm.join(topic)

swarm.on('connection', (socket, details) => {
  console.log('new connection!', details)

  // you can now use the socket as a stream, eg:
  // socket.pipe(unichain.replicate()).pipe(socket)
})

swarm.on('disconnection', (socket, details) => {
  console.log(details.peer.host, 'disconnected!')
  console.log('now we have', swarm.peers.length, 'peers!')
})

Build it with Browserify to get it running on the web.

You could also compile an existing codebase relying on bitswarm to run on the web by adding a browser field set to {"bitswarm": "bitswarm-web"} to have Browserify alias it when compiling dependencies.

Setting up a proxy server

BitswarmServer provides two services:

• BitswarmProxyWS: to proxy bitswarm connections over websockets. Path: ws://yourserver/proxy
• SignalServer: for P2P WebRTC signaling connections. Path: ws://yourserver/signal

Running a BitswarmServer will allows you to use both services in one single process.

npm i -g @web4/bitswarm-web

# Run it! Default port is 4977 (HYPR on a phone pad)
bitswarm-web

# Run it with a custom port
bitswarm-web --port 42069

Running as a Linux service with SystemD

sudo cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/bitswarm-web.service
[Unit]
Description=Bitswarm proxy server which webpages can connect to.

[Service]
Type=simple
# Check that bitswarm-web is present at this location
# If it's not, replace the path with its location
# You can get the location with 'whereis bitswarm-web'
# Optionally add a --port parameter if you don't want 4977
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitswarm-web
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/bitswarm-web.service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable bitswarm-web
sudo systemctl start bitswarm-web

sudo systemctl status bitswarm-web