go-textile

README

go-textile

---

Status

This repository contains the core Textile node and daemon, a command-line client, and a mobile client for building an iOS/Android application.

See textile-mobile for the Textile Photos iOS/Android app.

What is Textile?

Textile provides encrypted, recoverable, schema-based, and cross-application data storage built on IPFS and libp2p. We like to think of it as a decentralized data wallet with built-in protocols for sharing and recovery, or more simply, an open and programmable iCloud.

Please see the Wiki for more.

Install

Download the latest release for your OS or jump to Docker. You can also install the Textile desktop tray app to run local web/desktop apps that leverage Textile tools.

Usage

~ $ textile --help
Usage:
  textile [OPTIONS] <command>

Help Options:
  -h, --help  Show this help message

Available commands:
  account        Manage a wallet account
  blocks         View thread blocks
  cafes          Manage cafes
  chat           Start a thread chat
  commands       List available commands
  comments       Manage thread comments
  config         Get and set config values
  contacts       Manage contacts
  daemon         Start the daemon
  files          Manage thread files
  init           Init the node repo and exit
  invites        Manage thread invites
  ipfs           Access IPFS commands
  likes          Manage thread likes
  logs           List and control Textile subsystem logs.
  ls             Paginate thread content
  messages       Manage thread messages
  migrate        Migrate the node repo and exit
  notifications  Manage notifications
  ping           Ping another peer
  profile        Manage public profile
  sub            Subscribe to thread updates
  threads        Manage threads
  tokens         Manage Cafe access tokens
  version        Print version and exit
  wallet         Manage or create an account wallet

Quick-start

Initialize a new wallet

$ textile wallet init

This will generate a mnemonic phrase for accessing/recovering derived accounts. You may specify a word count and password as well (run with --help for usage).

Initialize a peer with an account

Next, use an account seed from your wallet to initialize a new peer. First time users should just use the first account’s (Account 0) seed, which is printed out by the wallet init sub-command. The private seed begins with “S”. The public address begins with “P”. Use the accounts sub-command to access deeper derived wallet accounts.

$ textile init -s <account_seed>

Start the daemon

$ textile daemon

You can now use the command-line client to interact with your running peer.

Adding Files

Files are tracked by threads. So, let’s start there.

Create a new thread

$ textile threads add "hello world" --media

This will create and join a thread backed by the built-in media schema. Use the --help flag on any sub-command for more options and info.

Add a file

$ textile files add <image path> --caption "beautiful"

The thread schema encodes the image at various width and extracts exif data. The resulting files are added to the thread under one directory. You also add an entire directory.

$ textile files add <dir path> --caption "more beauty"

Browse a thread feed

The command-line client is not really meant to provide a great UX for browsing thread content. However, you can easily paginate the feed with ls.

$ textile ls --thread <thread ID>

Comment on a file

$ textile comments add "good eye" --block <block ID>

Like a file

$ textile likes add --block <block ID>

Sharing files / chatting

In order to start sharing or chatting with someone else, you’ll first need an open and shared thread. An open threads allows other to read and write, while shared means anyone can join via an invite. See textile threads --help for much more about threads, access control types, and share settings.

$ textile threads add "dog photos" --media --type=open --sharing=shared

There are two types of invites: direct peer-to-peer and external.

• Peer-to-peer invites are encrypted with the invitee's public key.
• External invites are encrypted with a single-use key and are useful for on-boarding new users.

Create a direct peer-to-peer thread invite

$ textile invites create --thread <thread ID> --peer <peer ID>

The receiving peer will be notified of the invite. They can list all pending direct invites.

$ textile invites ls

The result is something like:

[
    {
        "id": "QmUv8783yptknBHCSSnscWNLZdz5K8uhpHZYaWnPkMxu4i",
        "name": "dog photos",
        "inviter": "fido",
        "date": "2018-12-07T13:02:57-08:00"
    }
]

Accept a direct peer-to-peer invite

$ textile invites accept QmUv8783yptknBHCSSnscWNLZdz5K8uhpHZYaWnPkMxu4i

Create an “external” thread invite

This is done by simply omitting the --peer flag with the invites create command.

$ textile invites create --thread <thread ID>

The result is something like:

{
    "invite": "QmcDmpmBr6qB5QGvsUaTZZtwpGpevGgiSEa7C3AJE9EZiU",
    "key": "aKrQmYCMiCQvkyjnm4sFhxdZaFH8g9h7EaLxdBGsZCVjsoyMPzQJQUyPrn7G"
}

Your friend can use the resulting address and key to accept the invite and join the thread.

$ textile invites accept QmcDmpmBr6qB5QGvsUaTZZtwpGpevGgiSEa7C3AJE9EZiU --key aKrQmYCMiCQvkyjnm4sFhxdZaFH8g9h7EaLxdBGsZCVjsoyMPzQJQUyPrn7G

At this point, both of you can add and receive files via this thread. You can also exchange text messages (chat).

Add a text message to a thread

$ textile messages add "nice photos" --thread <thread ID>

Start a chat in a thread

$ textile chat --thread <thread ID>

This will start an interactive chat session with other thread peers.

Docker

See available tags here.

Run a Textile node

$ docker run -it --name textile-node \
  -p 4001:4001 -p 8081:8081 -p 5050:5050 -p 127.0.0.1:40600:40600 \
  textile/go-textile:latest

Run a Textile node as a cafe

$ docker run -it --name textile-cafe-node \
  -p 4001:4001 -p 8081:8081 -p 5050:5050 -p 127.0.0.1:40600:40600 -p 40601:40601 \
  -e CAFE_HOST_URL=<public_URL> -e CAFE_HOST_PUBLIC_IP=<public_IP> \
  textile/go-textile:latest-cafe

A cafe node can issue client sessions (JWTs) to other nodes. In order to issue valid sessions, the cafe must know its public IP address and the machine's public facing URL. The CAFE_HOST_PUBLIC_IP and CAFE_HOST_URL environment variable values are written to the textile config file. Read more about cafe host config settings here.

Contributing

Go get the source code

$ go get github.com/textileio/go-textile

You can ignore the gx package errors. You'll need two package managers to get setup…

Install the golang package manager, dep

MacOS:

$ brew install dep

Debian:

$ sudo apt-get install go-dep

Install the IPFS package manager, gx

$ go get -u github.com/whyrusleeping/gx
$ go get -u github.com/whyrusleeping/gx-go

Install the dependencies managed by dep and gx

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/textileio/go-textile
$ make setup

Run the tests

$ make test

Building

There are various things to build…

CLI/daemon

$ make build

iOS Framework

$ go get golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile
$ gomobile init
$ make ios

Android Framework

$ go get golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile
$ gomobile init
$ make android

Docs

$ make docs

Tray app

The build is made by a vendored version of go-astilectron-bundler. Due to Go's painful package management, you'll want to delete any go-astilectron-related binaries and source code you have installed from github.com/asticode in your $GOPATH. Then you can install the vendored go-astilectron-bundler:

go install ./vendor/github.com/asticode/go-astilectron-bundler/astilectron-bundler

Change into the tray folder and build the app:

cd tray
astilectron-bundler -v

Double-click the built app in tray/output/{darwin,linux,windows}-amd64, or run it directly:

go run *.go

You can also build the architecture-specific versions with:

astilectron-bundler -v -c bundler.{darwin,linux,windows}.json

Linux

On Linux, you also have to apt-get install libappindicator1 xclip libgconf-2-4 due to an issue with building Electron-based apps.

Acknowledgments

While now almost entirely different, this project was jump-started from OpenBazaar. Thanks to @cpacia, @drwasho and the rest of the contributors for their work on openbazaar-go. And of course, thank you, Protocal Labs, for the incredible FOSS effort and constant inspiration.

License

MIT