Orbit-db: Can orbit-db be run in the browser?

[joshmh]

This could open up some really interesting scenarios for web pages that could store data on IPFS.

[haadcode]

Not yet. There's a dependency on 'asyncawait' module which only runs in node. I'm in the process of removing that dependency and making it work in the browser, though.

[joshmh]

Excellent news, thanks! 👍

[cyclopse87]

Glad to see this too @haadcode agree some awesome ways to use this db on the browser with ipfs.

[haadcode]

Check this out:
https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-db/blob/master/examples/browser.html

Browser version available as of v0.7.0. Let me know if you have any problems or questions, I'd be happy to help!

[joshmh]

Wow, that was fast! This is exciting, I'm going to be playing around with this :)

[joshmh]

@haadcode I noticed in the Readme there's a requirement to have an IPFS daemon running for the browser example. Is this because js-ipfs isn't complete yet? Is the ultimate goal to be able to run everything in the browser?

The use case I was thinking about is to allow users to visit a web page and allow the web page to immediately use orbit-db as a database backed by IPFS without requiring anything else of the user.

[haadcode]

@haadcode I noticed in the Readme there's a requirement to have an IPFS daemon running for the browser example. Is this because js-ipfs isn't complete yet? Is the ultimate goal to be able to run everything in the browser?

Correct. Unfortunately js-ipfs in not fully ready yet (but it's close), so the only option is to use a local daemon atm. The goal is to, however, make everything work in the browser and I've been basically laying the ground work in orbit-db for the day js-ipfs is ready and it can all be put in the browser without the need to install / require anything.

As for your use case, I would propose to continue to develop with a local daemon for now and once js-ipfs ready, it should be an easy upgrade path to fully working ipfs in the browser. I'll make sure orbit-db doesn't change so that the only thing you need to do is to include 'js-ipfs' instead of 'ipfs-api'. Does that make sense and can you work with that?

[joshmh]

Sounds great. This is all still pretty experimental for us, so I'm more concerned about the road map. I've been really impressed with the massive effort going on with js-ipfs, so hopefully we'll see this soon! Great work on orbit-db!