README.md

dhtup: Go library that interfaces with DHT BEP46 resources

Overview

dhtup uses a torrent client to fetch BEP46 resources.

To recap, BEP46 is an extension to the BitTorrent protocol that allows a single publisher to push and update torrent on the DHT. It does this by combining BEP44 -- another BitTorrent extension that allows pushing arbitrary data (not torrent) to the DHT, usually limited to 1000 bytes -- and regular torrents. In essense, when you put something on the DHT using BEP46, you're usually making a torrent and then pushing that torrent's infohash to the DHT, not the content of the torrent.

App

In addition to being a library for storing stuff using torrents on the DHT, this repo contains a Fly app that generates torrents, publishes, and seeds them. It was used to publish a copy of the global config to the DHT.

It's been paused with fly scale count 0. It can be resumed by fly scale count 3, as it runs in 3 different regions. The S3 upload credentials have been deactivated in IAM.

I've pushed an easter egg value to ensure no old clients pick up outdated global configs from the DHT. If that fails, push a dummy torrent infohash instead.

Example of using BEP46 to put/get data on/from the DHT

Here's how to push some random data to the DHT using BEP46 and fetch it:

# 0. Install tools (make sure your $GOBIN path is in $PATH)
# - dht
go install github.com/anacrolix/dht/v2/cmd/dht@114cb152af7c452f70f90f3e81c41495a855a70e
# - torrent
go install github.com/anacrolix/torrent/cmd/torrent@1f6b23d995114355fa3081dcda5422ea8fa6766f
# - torrent-create
go install github.com/anacrolix/torrent/cmd/torrent-create@a319506dda5e63b4aa09dde762750689dfb1520b

# 1. Make a private key
openssl rand -hex 32 > myprivkey

# 2. Make a torrent
rm -rf mydir
mkdir mydir
echo "bunnyfoofoo" > mydir/myfile
torrent-create -n mydir > my.torrent

# 3. Get its infohash
torrent metainfo my.torrent infohash | cut -d : -f 1 > my.torrent.infohash

# 4. Put the infohash on the DHT
dht put-mutable-infohash --key `cat myprivkey` \
  --salt "salt" \
  --info-hash "`cat my.torrent.infohash`" --auto-seq | tee my.torrent.bep46target

# 5. Now, get the torrent's infohash from the DHT using the Bep46Target in "my.torrent.target"
dht get `head -n 1 my.torrent.bep46target` --salt "salt" --extract-infohash
# The result you get here will match the contents of "my.torrent.infohash"

Usage Example

package main

import (
  "github.com/getlantern/dhtup"
	"github.com/anacrolix/missinggo/v2"
	"github.com/anacrolix/publicip"
	"github.com/anacrolix/dht/v2"
  "fmt"
  "os"
)

func main() {
    // Some random Bep46Target you wanna read its data
	  var bep46Target Krpc.ID = "..."

    // Make a DhtContext
    pubip, err := publicip.Get4(context.Background())
    dieIfErr(err)
    someConfigDir := "/tmp/whatever"
    dhtupContext, err := dhtup.NewContext(ipv4, someConfigDir)
    dieIfErr(err)

    // Declare a new dhtup.Resource
    res := dhtup.NewResource(dhtup.ResourceInput{
      DhtTarget:  bep46Target,
      DhtContext: dhtupContext,
      // Your file path. In the "Example" case above, that would be "myfile"
      FilePath: "your file path",
      WebSeedUrls: []string{...},
      Salt: []byte("whatever"),
      MetainfoUrls: []string{...},
    })
    reader, _, err := res.Open(context.TODO())
    dieIfErr(err)
    defer reader.Close()

    // Start reading the data (i.e., downloading the torrent)
    ctxReader := missinggo.ContextedReader{R: reader, Ctx: context.TODO()}
    fd, err := os.CreateTemp("", "whatever")
    dieIfErr(err)
    defer fd.Close()
    // This operation is blocking: it'll start basically downloading the torrent at this point
    _, err = io.Copy(fd, ctxReader)
    dieIfErr(err)

    fmt.Printf("File downloaded\n")
}