The IPFS Gateways
IPFS Gateways and Browsers
Last updated
IPFS Gateways and Browsers
Last updated
Gateways are provided strictly for convenience: in other words, they help tools that speak HTTP but do not speak distributed protocols (such as IPFS) to communicate. They are the first stage of the upgrade path for the web. More information about IPFS Gateways.
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When is needed, CIDv1's case-insensitive encoding should be used in the subdomain:
Example:
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Subdomain convention can be replaced with a native handler. The IPFS URL protocol scheme follows the same requirement of case-insensitive CIDv1 as subdomains:
An IPFS URL does not retain the original path, but instead requires a conversion step to/from URI representation:
ipfs://{immutable-root}/path/to/resourceA→/ipfs/{immutable-root}/path/to/resourceAipns://{mutable-root}/path/to/resourceB→/ipns/{mutable-root}/path/to/resourceB
The first element after the double slash is an opaque identifier representing the content root. It is interpreted as an authority component used for origin calculation, which provides necessary isolation between security contexts of different content trees.
Example:
Native URI requires CID to be case-insensitive. Use of CIDv1 in Base32 is advised.
HTTP gateways have worked well since 2015, but they come with a significant set of limitations related both to the centralized nature of HTTP and some of HTTP's semantics. Location-based addressing of a gateway depends on both DNS and HTTPS/TLS, which relies on a trust in certificate authorities (opens new window)(CAs) and public key infrastructure (opens new window)(PKI). In the long term, these issues should be mitigated by use of opportunistic protocol upgrade schemes.
Tools and browser extensions should detect IPFS content paths and resolve them directly over IPFS protocol. They should use HTTP gateway only as a fallback when no native implementation is available in order to ensure a smooth, backward-compatible transition.
In the most basic scheme, a URL path used for content addressing is effectively a resource name without a canonical location. The HTTP server provides the location part, which makes it possible for browsers to interpret an IPFS content path as relative to the current server and just work without a need for any conversion:
Gateway Recipes
Informal group working on improving IPFS presence in web browsers
Our goal is to facilitate native support for IPFS and other decentralized protocols in web browsers in order to benefit ....
Browser users: Browser extensions and native-included IPFS alike expose IPFS features in a robust and intuitive way
Web developers: Web developers can enjoy a smooth experience working with IPFS in browser contexts
Browser vendors: Browser developers are empowered to meet the requirements of the distributed web
IPFS Companion browser extension
IPFS and the JavaScript ecosystem
How to address IPFS on the web
How to run own HTTP Gateway
DNSLink
Collaborations
W3C
IPFS and Igalia collaborate on dweb in browsers
Brave
Opera
Get involved!
Resources
Notable past web extension experiments
The long-term goal of this project was to integrate these APIs into the WebExtensions ecosystem, but as of Q3 2020 it is not yet in Firefox Nightly
Exposing the IPFS API via window.ipfs(experiment ended in 2020)
Support for chrome.sockets.* APIs in Chromium browsers (deprioritized due to EOL 2022)
DNSLink
IPFS and Igalia collaborate on dweb in browsers
The most notable highlights:
IPFS and Igalia started a collaboration that will continue during 2021.
Distributed web schemes have been safelisted in Chrome 86’s implementation of custom handlers and registered at IANA.
Chrome 89 will allow browser extensions to register cross-origin handlers or handlers for schemes with prefix ext+. Refinement is pending for the permission UI.
Miscellaneous other fixes have landed for the Firefox and Chromium’s implementations of custom handlers.
Brave
TLDR integration status:
Demo: Opening ipfs://{cid} will trigger install prompt for go-ipfs managed by Brave itself.
Opera
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Read about
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is a browser extension that simplifies access to IPFS resources and adds browser support for the IPFS protocol. It runs in Firefox (desktop and Android) and Chromium-based browsers including Chrome or Brave. Check out all of IPFS Companion's features and install it today!
Mozilla hosted a community effort called to implement experimental APIs for Firefox WebExtensions, with a goal of enabling dweb protocols in Firefox through browser add-ons:
IPFS , including a native protocol handler, local DNS-SD discovery and TCP transport
At present, in order to interact with IPFS in a web browser, you must either bundle (a full IPFS node in JavaScript) with your client-side application or use the client library to connect to an external daemon running on a local or remote machine.
To learn more, make sure to check the browser-* examples at
Highlight: an advanced, end-to-end example of using js-ipfs node in SharedWorker from ServiceWorker can be found at
Use the latest and follow .
enables you to map a domain name to an IPFS address (CID or IPNS libp2p-key) by means of a DNS TXT record.
Read the for details, including how to set it up on your own website
See details on to see additional benefits of using IPFS Companion with DNSLink support
Protocol Labs is a W3C Member. Current focus is to watch, learn, and participate in .
In 2020 IPFS and started a collaboration that continues to this day. Read more:
Firefox 84 marks http://*.localhost/ URLs as , which means websites loaded from local will have access to the same Web APIs as HTTPS version.
Firefox 84 has improved support for . Patches have also been submitted to WebKit but are pending on reviews and discussions.
Work is in progress to improve Chromium’s consistency and specification compliance regarding the notion of , including removing non-standard localhost names.
WIP refactor to make it easier to register custom protocol handlers (video: )
for Windows, macOS and Linux. When Brave detects an address which is an HTTP gateway URL to IPFS content or a native IPFS address such as ipfs:// or ipns:// it will prompt the user to install and enable the native IPFS node, or to use an HTTP gateway. Diagnostic UI can be found at brave://ipfs, we suggest enabling IPFS Companion for the best experience
Initial release (v1.19) is focused on daemon orchestration and on URI support (read )
For the best experience enable IPFS Companion and switch it to IPFS Node Type . When Companion is enabled all IPFS resources will be resolved by the local node.
Opera for Android 57 introduced support for resolving ipfs:// or ipns:// via a customizable gateway. For more information