dweb-archive

User Interface to access the archive from the browser. Builds on dweb-transports and dweb-objects, and typically (currently) loaded from dweb-transport

Background

This library is part of a general project at the Internet Archive (archive.org) to support the decentralized web.

Goals

to allow unmodified browsers to access the Internet Archive's millions of items
to support as many of the IA's features as possible, adding them iteratively
to use decentralized platforms for as many features as possible, without sacrificing functionality
to avoid single points of failure where possible

Installation

All cases

git clone https://git@github.com/internetarchive/dweb-archive.git
cd dweb-archive

# install the dependencies including IPFS & WebTorrent and dweb-transports and dweb-objects
npm install

Installation for testing in a browser

Do the "All Case install above"

Install a simple http-server, this may require sudo depending on permissions

npm run setuphttp
npm install -g http-server` 
cd dist
http-server

Now open a browser page.

Note: Firefox works better than Chrome for local usage as Chrome limits cross-origin http to 6 streams and we need to implement a limited http pool to fix this.

open "http://localhost:8080/archive.html"

OR load via the bootloader, passing the url parameter will simulate what happens at https://dweb.archive.org/

open "http://localhost:8080/bootloader.html?url=http://dweb.archive.org

To test with limited transports, for example HTTP only, add the transport parameter.

open "http://localhost:8080/archive.html?transport=HTTP"

Node Installation to work on this repo

Note that the only reason to do this would be to work on the code,

Do the "All Case install above"

Build (webpack) the bundles and copy needed files to dist/ npm run build

See related:

Archive.org bootstrap into the Archive's page
Examples examples

Repos:

dweb-transports: Common API to underlying transports (http, webtorrent, ipfs, yjs)
dweb-objects: Object model for Dweb inc Lists, Authentication, Key/Value, Naming and example html for these
dweb-serviceworker: Run Transports in ServiceWorker (experimental)
dweb-archive: Decentralized Archive webpage and bootstrapping
dweb-transport: Original Repo, still has some half-complete projects

Directory structure here

dist - where files needed by dweb-transport are located
fonts, images, includes/* include files that are located so that existing Archive HTML and JS can find them where expected
images - holds images used by dweb html files
originals - saved copies of some example Archive pages and metadata to allow comparisom with HTML generated
archive.html - main file for displaying archive (detail or search) pages
archive.js - top level for creating archive-bundle.js
bootloader.html - entry point to the dweb, loads decentralized transport, and resolves a URL as a name
dweb-archive-styles.css - CSS styles for dweb, note that it uses standard archive styles for most
LICENSE - standard GNU Affero licence
webpack.config.js - defines bundling, and in particular which files are needed for the distribution

Class hierarchy

ArchiveFile - represents a single file
ArchiveItem - represents data structures for an item (a directory of files)
- ArchiveBase - superclass for each item type, has the structure of displaying pages
  - Details - display a details page like archive.org/details/foo
    - AV - base page for Audio/Video items
      - Audio - display an Audio item
      - Video - display a Video item
    - DownloadsDirectory - for displaying the list of files in an item
    - Image - display an image item
    - Texts - display a Text item (TODO works - but not decentralized)
  - Search - display a search page like archive.org/search.php?query=foo
    - Collection - display a Collection item
    - Home - archive home page, acts like a search
  - DetailsError - display a line of text as an error
Nav - common class for navigation structures (mostly at the top of the page) also maps item types to classes
ReactFake - an expansion of dweb-objects/utils/createElement to fake react-like "createElement" allowing JSX to be used in JS
Tile - used to represent each tile displayed in a search
Util - a collection of tools, short functions, and dictionaries of use in multiple places

API of key subclassed function

The general route to load a single Details item (TODO - writeup for Search) is ...

Nav.nav_details(itemid) - load and display a details page
- Nav.factory
  - new Details({itemid}) - to get metadata
  - determine class of item e.g. Texts, video
  - new Video({itemid}).render => ArchiveBase.render
    - Details.wrap - build the elements
      - Nav.navwrap - the global navigation elements, menus etc
      - theatreIaWrap - wrap the main content in controls (e.g. play etc)
        
        Displays main content - highly variable between types (Texts, Image, Video etc)
        
        cherModal - display sharing info
      - itemDetailsAboutJSX - content about the main object
    - browserbefore - anything to do before putting the elements onto the page
      - archive_setup_push - put functions into a data structure (used by Archive's AJS) this is subclassed by each type
      - AJS_on_dom_loaded - run the functions saved with archive_setup_push (TODO or some other funciton - define)
    - domrender - display on the page
    - browserafter - anything after displaying on the page

For a Search/Colletion/Home the structure is slightly different

Search.wrap
- Nav.navwrap - navigation as for Details
- banner - appear above tiles
- rowColumnsItems - loops over results displaying Tiles
- About & Forum tabs (for Collection only)

Release notes

0.1.61: Updated ia-components and dweb-archivecontroller in webpack
0.1.60: move navwrap into IAUX and rebuild transport and crawl indicators
0.1.59: Bug fix with undefined description
0.1.58: Added crawl UI CSS (rest is in ia-components)
0.1.58: ScrollableTileGrid component
0.1.58: Move components into @internetarchive/ia-components repo
0.1.57: Simplify handling of urls, especially removes unneeded metadata fetch from a lot of thumbnails on mirror
0.1.56: Component support reorganized and expanded for IAUX
0.1.55: Move setconfig url; AnchorDetails & Tabby components; work with playlist API (in dweb-archivecontroller 0.1.52)
0.1.53: Refactor components for IAUX; Incorporate dweb-archivecontroller fix to relateditems;
0.1.52: Bug fix
0.1.51: Support bookreader (more work to do on this)
0.1.50: Set title on window from item title, or query.
0.1.49: config button; IAReactComponent;
0.1.48: Repeatable metadata;

iisa/dweb-archive