Using Helia from CommonJS

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Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• About The Project
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation and Running example
• Usage
• Documentation
• Contributing
• Want to hack on IPFS?

About The Project

• Read the docs
• Look into other examples to learn how to spawn a Helia node in Node.js and in the Browser
• Visit https://dweb-primer.ipfs.io to learn about IPFS and the concepts that underpin it
• Head over to https://proto.school to take interactive tutorials that cover core IPFS APIs
• Check out https://docs.ipfs.io for tips, how-tos and more
• See https://blog.ipfs.io for news and more
• Need help? Please ask 'How do I?' questions on https://discuss.ipfs.io

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Make sure you have installed all of the following prerequisites on your development machine:

• Git - Download & Install Git. OSX and Linux machines typically have this already installed.
• Node.js - Download & Install Node.js and the npm package manager.

Installation and Running example

> npm install
> npm start

Usage

This tutorial is a port of helia-101 but the main file is CommonJS and not ESM.

ESM modules using import can await top-level promises - this means they have to be loaded asynchronously which is incompatible with Node.js' require function.

As of Node.js 22, a special module-sync field can be added to the exports map which indicates a module file that does not await any top-level promises - this allows it to be loaded by require even if the module contains ESM syntax.

Helia awaits on no promises during loading so has module-sync defined for all entry points.

The example consists of one file, index.js which is a CommonJS file that loads Helia using require.

Everything else is the same as the helia-101. Please see that example for a full breakdown of the code.

For more examples, please refer to the Documentation

Documentation

• IPFS Primer
• IPFS Docs
• Tutorials
• More examples
• API - Helia
• API - @helia/unixfs

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the IPFS Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -a -m 'feat: add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Want to hack on IPFS?

The IPFS implementation in JavaScript needs your help! There are a few things you can do right now to help out:

Read the Code of Conduct and JavaScript Contributing Guidelines.

• Check out existing issues The issue list has many that are marked as 'help wanted' or 'difficulty:easy' which make great starting points for development, many of which can be tackled with no prior IPFS knowledge
• Look at the Helia Roadmap This are the high priority items being worked on right now
• Perform code reviews More eyes will help a. speed the project along b. ensure quality, and c. reduce possible future bugs
• Add tests. There can never be enough tests