ipns-utils

README

ipns-utils

Some utilities for working with IPNS records

Record creation

Problem: Have you ever tried to run ipfs dht put and realized you don't have any way of creating an IPNS record to test with?

Solution: Run ipns-utils create [-output directoryPath] and it will output a file with the name of an IPNS key whose contents are a record for that key. Record fields are not yet settable (if this is a feature request feel free to file an issue/PR).

Record parsing

Problem: You run ipfs dht get /ipns/Qmxyz... > ipns_record and get a file, but you have no easy way of seeing what's inside of it

Solution: Run ipns-utils parse -i ipns_record

PubSub topics

Problem: The IPNS keys that people tend to interact with look like QmXMuMWm6k3CD3sHV824H2BT1ugcHKF6Tm13ZVM8RhGTB7 (base58 CIDv0 representation) or bafzbeiegbnjh5uopd5vc22tgkz6chf7a6ala3x5e47vnhv5sq5bzo46tri (base32 CIDv1 with libp2p-key codec representation), while IPNS over PubSub topics look like /record/L2lwbnMvEiCGC1J-0c8fai1qZlZ8I5fg8BYN36Tn6tPXsodDl3PTig. This makes it very difficult to be able to know which IPNS topics you are subscribed to, or to debug the raw pubsub channel to view IPNS updates.

Solution:

ipns-utils pubsub get-key --topic topicID [--format cidValue] will convert a pubsub topic into an IPNS key. For example ipns-utils pubsub get-key --topic /record/L2lwbnMvEiCGC1J-0c8fai1qZlZ8I5fg8BYN36Tn6tPXsodDl3PTig will return QmXMuMWm6k3CD3sHV824H2BT1ugcHKF6Tm13ZVM8RhGTB7 and passing the --format 1 flag will return bafzbeiegbnjh5uopd5vc22tgkz6chf7a6ala3x5e47vnhv5sq5bzo46tri.

ipns utils pubsub get-topic --key key will convert an IPNS key into a pubsub topic. For example both ipns utils pubsub get-topic --key QmXMuMWm6k3CD3sHV824H2BT1ugcHKF6Tm13ZVM8RhGTB7 and ipns utils pubsub get-topic --key bafzbeiegbnjh5uopd5vc22tgkz6chf7a6ala3x5e47vnhv5sq5bzo46tri output /record/L2lwbnMvEiCGC1J-0c8fai1qZlZ8I5fg8BYN36Tn6tPXsodDl3PTig

Notes

The command line flags all have shortened aliases if/when you get tired of typing out get-topic over and over again, but you'll see those on the command line 😃.

This is, so far, a very basic tool for working with IPNS records in a way which has been useful to the author. If you have suggestions or PRs please feel free to add.