rusty-lassie

A Rust wrapper for Lassie - a minimal universal retrieval client library for IPFS and Filecoin

Lassie repository: https://github.com/filecoin-project/lassie

Installation

$ cargo add lassie

This library uses CGo to turn the Go version of Lassie into a library we can link to Rust programs.

In addition to the Rust build toolchain, you also need Go installed. See Go Downloads.

On Windows, Go uses gcc to create C libraries. Go recommends installing TDM GCC.

Basic Use

We are using Lassie in a daemon mode. We run the Lassie HTTP server in the background and then use an HTTP client like ureq to fetch content from IPFS & Filecoin networks using Lassie's HTTP interface.

The first step is to start the Lassie daemon:

use lassie::Daemon;

pub fn main() {
  let daemon = Daemon::start(DaemonConfig::default()).expect("cannot start Lassie");
  let port = daemon.port();

  // ...
}

Notes:

• You don't need to stop the daemon, it will be stopped when it's dropped.

• There can be only one daemon running per process, the library enforces this.

• This code is synchronous and uses Mutex under the hood. Be mindful of the ramifications when starting the daemon from async fn!

Once the daemon is running, you can make HTTP requests to fetch content.

let port = daemon.port();
let url = format!("http://127.0.0.1:{port}/ipfs/bafybeib36krhffuh3cupjml4re2wfxldredkir5wti3dttulyemre7xkni");
let response = ureq::get(&url)
    .set("Accept", "application/vnd.ipld.car")
    .call();

let mut content = Vec::new();
response
    .into_reader()
    .read_to_end(&mut content)
    .expect("cannot read response body");

// content contains raw CAR data

Learn more about Lassie in their documentation:

• HTTP API Specification
• Returned CAR Specification

Windows specifics

It's not possible to statically link a library produced by CGo to a Rust program compiled using MSVC toolchain. As a workaround, we are building the Go Lassie library as a DLL that must be distributed together with the application executable.

Rusty-Lassie's build script copies the DLL into the target directory next to the main executable. All you need is to include this DLL in your distribution archive.

Cross-compilation

If you are building your project using Cross, you need to install Go in the Docker images used by Cross.

Check out our own Cross.toml and cross/Dockerfile for inspiration.

Learn more in Cross and Go documentation:

• Configuring cross via a Cross.toml file
• Dockerfiles
• Download and install Go

License

This library is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and MIT terms.

Copyright 2023. Protocol Labs, Inc.