Replicate and persist with Hypercore

In Connect two peers by key with HyperDHT and Connect to many peers by topic with Hyperswarm, peers can exchange chat messages so long as both are online at the same time and directly connected. The application is ephemeral, the messages are not persisted - they will be lost if the recipient is offline. Hypercore provides the persistence.

Hypercore is a secure, distributed append-only log. It is built for sharing enormous datasets and streams of real-time data. It has a secure transport protocol, making it easy to build fast and scalable peer-to-peer applications.

In this guide we'll extend the ephemeral chat example in Connect Many Peers but using Hypercore to add many significant new features:

• Persistence: The owner of the Hypercore can add messages at any time, and they'll be persisted to disk. Whenever they come online, readers can replicate these messages over Hyperswarm.
• Many Readers: New messages added to the Hypercore will be broadcast to interested readers. The owner gives each reader a reading capability (core.key) and a corresponding discovery key (core.discoveryKey). The former is used to authorize the reader, ensuring that they have permission to read messages, and the latter is used to discover the owner (and other readers) on the swarm.

The following example consists of two Pear Terminal Applications: writer-app and reader-app. When these two applications are opened, two peers are created and connected to each other. A Hypercore is used to store the data entered into the command line.

Create the writer app

The writer-app stores command-line input to a Hypercore instance and replicates that instance to other peers over Hyperswarm.

Create the writer-app project with these commands:

mkdir writer-app
cd writer-app
pear init -y -t terminal
npm install bare-path bare-process hypercore hyperswarm b4a

Alter the generated writer-app/index.js file to the following:

import path from 'bare-path'
import process from 'bare-process'
import Hyperswarm from 'hyperswarm'
import Hypercore from 'hypercore'
import b4a from 'b4a'

const swarm = new Hyperswarm()
Pear.teardown(() => swarm.destroy())

const core = new Hypercore(path.join(Pear.config.storage, 'writer-storage'))

// core.key and core.discoveryKey will only be set after core.ready resolves
await core.ready()
console.log('hypercore key:', b4a.toString(core.key, 'hex'))

// Append all stdin data as separate blocks to the core
process.stdin.on('data', (data) => core.append(data))

// core.discoveryKey is *not* a read capability for the core
// It's only used to discover other peers who *might* have the core
swarm.join(core.discoveryKey)
swarm.on('connection', conn => core.replicate(conn))

Create the reader app

The reader-app uses Hyperswarm to connect to the writer peer and synchronize its local Hypercore with the writer's Hypercore.

Create the reader-app project with these commands:

mkdir reader-app
cd reader-app
pear init -y -t terminal
npm install bare-path hypercore hyperswarm

Alter the generated reader-app/index.js file to the following:

import path from 'bare-path'
import Hyperswarm from 'hyperswarm'
import Hypercore from 'hypercore'

const swarm = new Hyperswarm()
Pear.teardown(() => swarm.destroy())

const core = new Hypercore(path.join(Pear.config.storage, 'reader-storage'), Pear.config.args[0])
await core.ready()

swarm.join(core.discoveryKey)
swarm.on('connection', conn => core.replicate(conn))

// swarm.flush() will wait until *all* discoverable peers have been connected to
await swarm.flush()

await core.update()

let position = core.length
console.log(`Skipping ${core.length} earlier blocks...`)
for await (const block of core.createReadStream({ start: core.length, live: true })) {
  console.log(`Block ${position++}: ${block}`)
}

Run the writer and reader

In one terminal, run writer-app with bare:

bare writer-app

The writer-app will output the Hypercore key.

In another terminal, open the reader-app and pass it the key:

bare reader-app <SUPPLY THE KEY HERE>

As inputs are made to the terminal running the writer application, outputs should be shown in the terminal running the reader application.

See also

• Work with many Hypercores using Corestore — recommended pattern when you need more than one core per process.
• Share append-only databases with Hyperbee — key/value store built on Hypercore.
• Storage and distribution — where these cores live on disk.