IPFS Launchpad: IPFS, 4 Nov 2022

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From YouTube: IPFS Desktop Walkthrough

Description

In this video from October 2022, Discordian will walk you through the graphical user interface for IPFS called IPFS Desktop, exploring the pages (or tabs) available in the Desktop for IPFS, as well as how to publish mutable file on IPNS for files you may want ot update and with a constant link to updated versions. You will also see how to use a permanent pinning service for IPFS

This content is created as a part of Protocol Labs' Launchpad program. You can get resources and written instructions in our learning platform at https://curriculum.pl-launchpad.io

Chapters:
0:00 Start
00:03 Install IPFS Desktop
00:21 Status Page
00:47 Files Page
02:13 Explore Page
02:27 Peers Page
02:49 Settings Page
03:06 IPNS Publishing
05:17 Pinning Services

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Welcome to a brief walkthrough of ipfs desktop first up is to go to docs.ipfs.tech as I've done here. Then click ipfs desktop now you just simply scroll down and then follow the instructions for whatever operating system. You're on after you get that installed, it'll launch up and it'll look something like this from here.

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We can click the status page and we can see that I have 1.2 gigs of data stored and I have discovered over 600 piers, see my peer ID on the Kubo version running in the background, the UI revision and some information for how to disable bandwidth metrics. If we wanted to so next up. Let's take a look at the files tab, so you can see. I have two files, one that is 10 bytes and a directory that is 125 megabytes.

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We can also hit import and import a file, a folder from ipfs or a new folder. So if we go to import from ipfs we'll be asked to give a path or a CID as well as a name for it, but for this example we're just going to add a file and then, if you click it, you can view it.

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So you can think of the files tab almost like a set of bookmarks with human readable names. You can see that it actually uh pinned this file upon adding it. So now what we could do is we could set the pinning status and we could actually unpin it on that same menu. If you had a pinning provider set up you'd be able to see that as well. Additionally, in this menu, we have share links where you can get a Gateway URL to whatever image that you shared.

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So, for example, if we wanted to share that image that we just got, we go back to our web browser. We could paste that link right in and we can see the image you can also copy the CID. You can inspect it download it download it as a car, rename it remove and publish to ipns we're going to circle back to published ipns.

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Next up is the explore tab from here. You can explore the dag of a few select things like the xkcd Archives. This is mostly useful if you're interested in how things work under the hood, so we're just going to move on to the peers, tab and right here you can see that I have 609 peers um from here. You can also add connections, so this would be um like a multi-address to another node that you'd like to connect to this, allows you to skip using the command line interface.

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So next up is the settings tab on the settings tab. We can access and change all sorts of things, so the Gateway that was provided earlier when we wanted to copy a public address that Gateway is set right here. So if you don't like the default, you can totally change it. Here is where we can see our ipns publishing keys.

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So now these can be very useful if you want to share a CID or um I guess specifically an address, and you want that address to always point to the newest version of something so, let's say you're publishing a website, for example. So, as you can see, I have a Blog, titled, blag and I have myself key.

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So what would happen if we generated a key here and let's name it tutorial now we have a new key and if we go back to our files tab, let's say we wanted to create a directory and just for convenience sake, we'll also name. This tutorial.

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And intertutorial directory, let's put in this picture, okay, so now we will publish this picture to ipns we're going to use our tutorial key and publish it, and it's going to have this weight. The initial 20 copies of the updated ipns Network, so I'm going to fast forward through this part, and now we can copy the link.

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We go back to our handy web browser.

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We can see our image add this new address, so let's say we want to update the image we um we just want to use a different way to maybe represent our fancy ipfs picture.

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So, let's import a different file. It could be in the same directory or folder. It doesn't really matter.

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We can publish this to our tutorial key again and we have to wait for another 20 copies of the updated ipns record to be stored.

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And now we actually don't need to copy this address here. We can just go back to our web browser. What we should be able to do is just refresh, and now we have our new picture, and this could work with websites or really whatever you want to use your key for.

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Now finally, I mentioned pending services, so this is the interface where you can add a pending service. We support out of the box, Estuary web3. storage, pinata and file base. You can also add a custom. One I'll just show off that menu, so you would just name it get the API endpoint from who, uh whoever is hosting your pinning service and a secret access token from the same location.

A

You can change your language here, submit or not submit analytics. Here you can enable a command line, interface, tutor mode here. This will show a little view: code icon next to Common ipfs commands, and that could help you if you're trying to learn the command line and then finally, we have our ipfs configuration where you can edit it and save it as you, please, conveniently in the web, UI I hope this breakdown was informative and helpful to whoever needs it. My name is discordian and I hope you have a lovely day.