ataraxia-tcp

TCP transport for Ataraxia. This transport can discover and automatically connect to other peers using a discovery. A discovery is available based on mDNS and DNS-SD that automatically connects to other instances on the same local network.

Installation

npm install ataraxia-tcp

Simple usage

Create a TCP transport that will bind to a random free port and announce its availability on the local network:

import { Network, AnonymousAuth } from 'ataraxia';
import { TCPTransport, TCPPeerMDNSDiscovery } from 'ataraxia-tcp';

// Setup a network with anonymous authentication
const net = new Network({
  name: 'name-of-your-app-or-network',
  
  transports: [
    new TCPTransport({
      // Discover other peers on the same physical network
      discovery: new TCPPeerMDNSDiscovery(),

      // Use anonymous authentication
      authentication: [
        new AnonymousAuth()
      ]
    })
  ]
});

// Join the network
await net.join();

Well-known ports and manual peers

In some cases you want to run a network that can be connected to from outside your local network. In that case its possible to define a port that the TCP transport will listen to:

import { Network, AnonymousAuth } from 'ataraxia';
import { TCPTransport, TCPPeerMDNSDiscovery } from 'ataraxia-tcp';

// Setup a network with anonymous authentication
const net = new Network({
  name: 'name-of-your-app-or-network',

  transports: [
    new TCPTransport({
      // A well known port - define your own or even better use a config file,
      port: 30000,

      // Use anonymous authentication
      authentication: [
        new AnonymousAuth()
      ]
    })
  ]
});

// Join the network
await net.join();

Another instance can then connect to that specific port:

import { Network, AnonymousAuth } from 'ataraxia';
import { TCPTransport, TCPPeerMDNSDiscovery } from 'ataraxia-tcp';

// Setup a network with anonymous authentication
const net = new Network({
  name: 'name-of-your-app-or-network'
});

const tcp = new TCPTransport({
  authentication: [
    new AnonymousAuth()
  ]
}):

// Add a manual addressing to the peer
tcp.addManualPeer({
  host: 'address-to-server',
  port: 30000
});

net.addTransport(tcp);

// Join the network
await net.join();

Ataraxia will attempt to connect to the manually added peers and will attempt to keep the connection available.

API

TCPTransport

• new TCPTransport(options)

  Create a new instance of this transport.

  • options
    • port?: number, port number that the server should bind to. Leave undefined for automatic assignment.
    • discovery?: TCPPeerDiscovery, discovery instance used to discover and announce availability to other peers.
    • authentication: AuthProvider[], array of authentication providers that this transport will use.

• port: number

  Port number bound to, will be 0 if no server was bound

• addManualPeer(hostAndPort: { host: string, port: number }): void

  Add a peer that should be manually connected to.

TCPPeerMDNSDiscovery

• new TCPPeerMDNSDiscovery()

  Create a discovery instance that will use mDNS and DNS-SD on the local physical network.