This example leverages the vite bundler to compile and serve the libp2p code in the browser. You can use other bundlers such as Webpack, but we will not be covering them here.
In order to run the example:
- Install dependencey at the root of the js-libp2p repository (if not already done),
- then, install the dependencies from same directory as this README:
npm install
npm run build
cd ./examples/libp2p-in-the-browser
npm install
Start by running the vite server:
npm start
The output should look something like this:
$ npm start
> [email protected] start
> vite index.html
Server running at http://localhost:1234
✨ Built in 1000ms.
This will compile the code and start a server listening on port http://localhost:1234. Now open your browser to http://localhost:1234. You should see a log of your node's Peer ID, the discovered peers from the Bootstrap module, and connections to those peers as they are created.
Now, if you open a second browser tab to http://localhost:1234, you should discover your node from the previous tab. This is due to the fact that the libp2p-webrtc-star transport also acts as a Peer Discovery interface. Your node will be notified of any peer that connects to the same signaling server you are connected to. Once libp2p discovers this new peer, it will attempt to establish a direct WebRTC connection.
Note: In the example we assign libp2p to window.libp2p, in case you would like to play around with the API directly in the browser. You can of course make changes to index.js and vite will automatically rebuild and reload the browser tabs.
This example uses public libp2p-webrtc-star servers. These servers should be used for experimenting and demos, they MUST not be used in production as there is no guarantee on availability.
You can see how to deploy your own signaling server in libp2p/js-libp2p-webrtc-star/DEPLOYMENT.md.
Once you have your own server running, you should add its listen address in your libp2p node configuration.