基于IPFS建立网站

A short guide to hosting your site on ipfs

Adding your static website to ipfs is quite simple! Simply turn on your daemon:

$ ipfs daemon

And add the directory containing your website:

$ ls mysite
img index.html
$ ipfs add -r mysite
added QmcMN2wqoun88SVF5own7D5LUpnHwDA6ALZnVdFXhnYhAs mysite/img/spacecat.jpg
added QmS8tC5NJqajBB5qFhcA1auav14iHMnoMZJWfmr4k3EY6w mysite/img
added QmYh6HbZhHABQXrkQZ4aRRSoSa6bb9vaKoHeumWex6HRsT mysite/index.html
added QmYeAiiK1UfB8MGLRefok1N7vBTyX8hGPuMXZ4Xq1DPyt7 mysite/

The very last hash next to the folder name is the one you want, let's call it $SITE_HASH for now.

Now, you can test it out locally by opening http://localhost:8080/ipfs/$SITE_HASH in your web browser! Next, to view it coming from another ipfs node, you can try http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/$SITE_HASH. Cool, right? But those hashes are rather ugly. Let's look at some ways to get rid of them.

First, you can do a simple DNS TXT record, containing dnslink=/ipfs/$SITE_HASH. Once that record propagates, you should be able to view your site at http://localhost:8080/ipns/your.domain. Now that's quite a bit cleaner. You can also try this on the gateway at http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipns/your.domain

Next, you might be asking "well what if i want to change my website, DNS is slow!" Well let me tell you about this little thing called Ipns (note the 'n'). Ipns is the Interplanetary Naming System, you might have noticed the above link has /ipns/ instead of /ipfs/. Ipns is used for mutable content in the ipfs network, it's relatively easy to use, and will allow you to change your website without updating the dns record every time! So how do you use it?

After adding your webpage, simply do:

$ ipfs name publish $SITE_HASH
Published to <your peer id>: /ipfs/$SITE_HASH

(Disclaimer: When using IPNS to update websites, it's important to think about that assets could be loaded from two different resolved hashes when updating your website, leading to outdated/missing assets unless accounted for)

Now, you can test that it worked by viewing: http://localhost:8080/ipns/<your peer id>. And also try the same link on the public gateway. Once you're convinced that works, let's again hide the hash. Change your DNS TXT record to dnslink=/ipns/<your peer id>, wait for that record to propagate, and then try accessing http://localhost:8080/ipns/your.domain.

At this point, you have a website on ipfs/ipns, and you may be wondering how you could expose it at http://your.domain, so that the Internet users of today may access it too without them having to know about any of this. It's actually surprisingly simple to do, all you need for this is your previously created TXT record and to point the A record of your.domain to the IP address of an ipfs daemon that listens on port 80 for HTTP requests (such as gateway.ipfs.io). The users' browsers will send your.domain in the Host header of the requests, and you have your dnslink TXT records, so the ipfs gateway will recognize your.domain as an IPNS name, and so it will serve from under /ipns/your.domain/ instead of /.

So, if you point your.domain's A record to the IP of gateway.ipfs.io, and then wait for the DNS to propagate, then anyone should be able to access your ipfs-hosted site without any extra configuration simply at http://your.domain.

Alternatively, it is possible to use CNAME records to point at the DNS records of the gateway. This way, IP addresses of the gateway are automatically updated. Note however that CNAME records to not allow for other records, such as a TXT to refer to the ipfs/ipns record. Because of this, ipfs allows to create a DNS TXT record for _dnslink.your.domain with dnslink=/ipns/<yourpeer id>.

So by creating a CNAME for your.domain to gateway.ipfs.io and adding a _dnslink.your.domain record with dnslink=/ipns/<your peer id> you can host your website without explicitly referring to IP addresses of the ipfs gateway.