Accessing IPFS

IPFS is a distributed peer to peer system. There is no central server! Typically, each machine (peer) runs a daemon that communicates with other peers.

The IpfsClient provides a simple way for your program to access the daemon via the IPFS HTTP API protocol. The client should be used as a shared object in your program, much like HttpClient. It is thread safe (re-entrant) and conserves sockets and TCP connections when only one instance is used.

public class Program
{
  static readonly IpfsClient ipfs = new IpfsClient();
  public async Task Main(string[] args) 
  {
    // Get the Peer info of the daemon
    var peer = await ipfs.IdAsync();
  }
}

Core API

The Core API is a set of interfaces to IPFS features and is implemented by the client. The FileSystem and PubSub features are most often used.

const string filename = "QmXarR6rgkQ2fDSHjSY5nM2kuCXKYGViky5nohtwgF65Ec/about";
string text = await ipfs.FileSystem.ReadAllTextAsync(filename);

Features

Feature	Purpose
Bitswap	Data trading module for IPFS; requests blocks from and sends blocks to other peers
Block	Manages the blocks
BlockRepository	Manages the repository of blocks
Bootstrap	Trusted peers
Config	Manages the configuration of the local peer
Dag	Manages the IPLD (linked data) Directed Acrylic Graph
Dht	Manages the Distributed Hash Table
Dns	DNS mapping to IPFS
Misc	Some miscellaneous methods
FileSystem	Manages the files/directories in IPFS
Key	Manages the cryptographic keys
Name	Manages the Interplanetary Name Space (IPNS)
Object	Manages the IPFS Directed Acrylic Graph
Pin	Manage objects that are locally stored and permanent
PubSub	Publish and subscribe to topic messages
Swarm	Get statistics on IPFS components
Swarm	Manages the swarm of peers