Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Proposal: Graphsync Public Interfaces #20

Merged
merged 7 commits into from
Apr 19, 2019
Merged
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
212 changes: 212 additions & 0 deletions README.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1 +1,213 @@
# go-graphsync

[![](https://img.shields.io/badge/made%20by-Protocol%20Labs-blue.svg?style=flat-square)](http://ipn.io)
[![](https://img.shields.io/badge/project-IPFS-blue.svg?style=flat-square)](http://ipfs.io/)
[![](https://img.shields.io/badge/freenode-%23ipfs-blue.svg?style=flat-square)](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23ipfs)
[![Coverage Status](https://codecov.io/gh/ipfs/go-bitswap/branch/master/graph/badge.svg)](https://codecov.io/gh/ipfs/go-graphsync/branch/master)
[![Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/ipfs/go-bitswap.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/ipfs/go-graphsync)

> An implementation of the [graphsync protocol](https://github.com/ipld/specs/blob/master/graphsync/graphsync.md) in go!

## Table of Contents

- [Background](#background)
- [Install](#install)
- [Usage](#usage)
- [Contribute](#contribute)
- [License](#license)

## Background

[GraphSync](https://github.com/ipld/specs/blob/master/graphsync/graphsync.md) is a protocol for synchronizing IPLD graphs among peers. It allows a host to make a single request to a remote peer for all of the results of traversing an [IPLD selector](https://github.com/ipld/specs/blob/master/selectors/selectors.md) on the remote peer's local IPLD graph.

`go-graphsync` provides an implementation of the Graphsync protocol in go.

### Go-IPLD-Prime

`go-graphsync` relies on `go-ipld-prime` to traverse IPLD Selectors in an IPLD graph. `go-ipld-prime` implements the [IPLD specification](https://github.com/ipld/specs) in go and is an alternative to older implementations such as `go-ipld-format` and `go-ipld-cbor`. In order to use `go-graphsync`, some understanding and use of `go-ipld-prime` concepts is necessary.

If your existing library (i.e. `go-ipfs` or `go-filecoin`) uses these other older libraries, `go-graphsync` provide translation layers so you can largely use it without switching to `go-ipld-prime` across your codebase.

## Install

`go-graphsync` requires Go >= 1.11 and can be installed using Go modules

## Usage

### Initializing a GraphSync Exchange

```golang
import (
graphsync "github.com/ipfs/go-graphsync"
gsnet "github.com/ipfs/go-graphsync/network"
gsbridge "github.com/ipfs/go-graphsync/ipldbridge"
ipld "github.com/ipfs/go-ipld-prime"
)

var ctx context.Context
var host libp2p.Host
var loader ipld.Loader

network := gsnet.NewFromLibp2pHost(host)
ipldBridge := gsbridge.NewIPLDBridge()
exchange := graphsync.New(ctx, network, ipldBridge, loader)
```

Parameter Notes:

1. `context` is just the parent context for all of GraphSync
2. `network` is a network abstraction provided to Graphsync on top
of libp2p. This allows graphsync to be tested without the actual network
3. `ipldBridge` is an IPLD abstraction provided to Graphsync on top of go-ipld-prime. This makes the graphsync library testable in isolation
4. `loader` is used to load blocks from content ids from the local block store. It's used when RESPONDING to requests from other clients. It should conform to the IPLD loader interface: https://github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime/blob/master/linking.go

### Write A Loader From The Stuff You Know

Coming from a pre-`go-ipld-prime` world, you probably expect a link loading function signature to look like this:

```golang
type Cid2BlockFn func (lnk cid.Cid) (blocks.Block, error)
```

in `go-ipld-prime`, the signature for a link loader is as follows:

```golang
type Loader func(lnk Link, lnkCtx LinkContext) (io.Reader, error)
```

`go-ipld-prime` intentionally keeps its interfaces as abstract as possible to limit dependencies on other ipfs/filecoin specific packages. An IPLD Link is an abstraction for a CID, and IPLD expects io.Reader's rather than an actual block. IPLD provides a `cidLink` package for working with Links that use CIDs as the underlying data, and it's safe to assume that's the type in use if your code deals only with CIDs. Anyway, a conversion would look something like this:

```golang
import (
ipld "github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime"
cidLink "github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime/linking/cid"
)

func LoaderFromCid2BlockFn(cid2BlockFn Cid2BlockFn) ipld.Loader {
return func(lnk ipld.Link, lnkCtx ipld.LinkContext) (io.Reader, error) {
asCidLink, ok := lnk.(cidlink.Link)
if !ok {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("Unsupported Link Type")
}
block, err := cid2BlockFn(asCidLink.Cid)
if err != nil {
return nil, err
}
return bytes.NewReader(block.RawData()), nil
}
}
```

Alternatively, you can just call:

```golang
loader := graphsync.LoaderFromCid2BlockFn(cid2BlockFn)
```

### Calling Graphsync

```golang
var exchange graphsync.GraphSync
var ctx context.Context
var p peer.ID
var cidRootedSelector ipld.Node

var responseProgress <-chan graphsync.ResponseProgress
var errors <-chan error

responseProgress, errors = exchange.Request(ctx context.Context, p peer.ID, rootedSelector Node)
```

Paramater Notes:
1. `ctx` is the context for this request. To cancel an in progress request, cancel the context.
2. `p` is the peer you will send this request to
3. `rootedSelector` is the a go-ipld-prime node the specifies a rooted selector

### Building a path selector

A rooted selector is a `go-ipld-prime` node that follows the spec outlined here: https://github.com/ipld/specs/blob/master/selectors/selectors.md

`go-ipld-prime` provides a series of builder interfaces for building this kind of structured data into a node. If your library simply wants to make a selector from CID and a path, represented by an array of strings, you could construct the node as follows:

```golang
import (
ipld "github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime"
free "github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime/impl/free"
fluent "github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime/fluent"
cidLink "github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime/linking/cid"
)

func SelectorSpecFromCidAndPath(lnk cid.Cid, pathSegments []string) (ipld.Node, error) {
var node ipld.Node
err := fluent.Recover(func() {
builder := fluent.WrapNodeBuilder(free.NodeBuilder())
node = builder.CreateMap(func (mb fluent.MapBuilder, knb fluent.NodeBuilder, vnb fluent.NodeBuilder) {
mb.Insert(knb.CreateString("root"), vnb.CreateLink(cidLink.Link{lnk}))
mb.Insert(knb.CreateString("selectors"),
vnb.CreateList(func (lb fluent.ListBuilder, vnb fluent.NodeBuilder) {
for _, pathSegment := range pathSegments {
lb.Append(CreateMap(
func (mb fluent.MapBuilder, knb fluent.NodeBuilder, vnb fluent.NodeBuilder) {
mb.Insert(knb.CreateString("selectPath"), vnb.CreateString(pathSegment))
},
))
}
}))
});
})
if err != nil {
return nil, err
}
return node, nil
}
```

Alternatively, just call:

```golang
rootedSelector := graphsync.SelectorSpecFromCidAndPath(lnk, pathSegments)
```

### Response Type

```golang

type ResponseProgress struct {
Node ipld.Node // a node which matched the graphsync query
Path ipld.Path // the path of that node relative to the traversal start
hannahhoward marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
LastBlock struct { // LastBlock stores the Path and Link of the last block edge we had to load.
ipld.Path
ipld.Link
}
}

```

The above provides both immediate and relevant metadata for matching nodes in a traversal, and is very similar to the information provided by a local IPLD selector traversal in `go-ipld-prime`

## Compatibility: Block Requests

While the above is extremely useful if your library already uses `go-ipld-prime`, if your library uses an older version of go ipld libraries, working with these types of `go-ipld-prime` data may prove challenging.

To support these clients, Graphsync provides a compatibility version of the above function that returns just blocks that were traversed:

```golang
var blocksChan <-chan blocks.Block
var errors <-chan error

blocksChan, errors = exchange.GetBlocks(ctx context.Context, p peer.ID, rootedSelector Node)
```

This is provided as a transitional layer and `go-graphsync` may drop support for this format in the future.

## Contribute

PRs are welcome!

Small note: If editing the Readme, please conform to the [standard-readme](https://github.com/RichardLitt/standard-readme) specification.

## License

This library is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and MIT terms.

Copyright 2019. Protocol Labs, Inc.