Sharing files one-off via http

Hi y’all; brilliant work you’re doing here! 👋

I mentioned to @mafintosh on IRC that a common use case I have is to want to share a single file (or disparate set of files) with a friend. Sometimes that friend won’t have dat installed, so it’s nice when I can share it over HTTP. Here are two ways I go about doing this:

1. oldweb

ssh eight45.net 'mkdir /tmp/fun'
scp file1.png ~/dev/file2.js eight45.net:/tmp/fun
ssh eight45.net 'ecstatic /tmp/fun -p 9111`

From here I can tell my friend to go to http://eight45.net:9111/ to see the files I shared.

2. ipfs

ipfs add -w file1.png ~/dev/file2.js
added QmSJ1Upq9RXzi167LwVpTqdBwXoemf5YDv3XDARqbRLPKE file1.png
added QmcGA3wQ2uBMQcEK1ae7rfY1T62v35qVrHaGPTJUQbhyzD file2.js
added QmNyNKUsiGpHcXjRjQjE49nfN4ayMAqac7YwkHwCf8x5te

From here I can tell my friend to visit https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNyNKUsiGpHcXjRjQjE49nfN4ayMAqac7YwkHwCf8x5te and they can access the files.

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Maybe there are already ways to do this with dat that I don’t know about, but here are the challenges I see:

1. dat share foo.png will create a dat for everything in the current directory. Having some way to make a transparent, ephemeral .dat directory for sharing a few ad-hoc files would be useful.
2. Some way for others to access the dat over http. IPFS makes everything accessible through its gateway on ipfs.io. Hashbase looks promising – maybe permit anonymous use for small files?

[edsilv]

I agree with @noffle that an ipfs.io-style public gateway would be a great asset for the community. datbase.org only seems to give you a preview, not the raw data.

What are the barriers to setting one up?

[pfrazee]

There are dat gateways on github. Just have to shoulder the cost. It also has problems with URLs not working right

On May 26, 2018, at 10:00 AM, Edward Silverton [e-mail] wrote:

I agree with @noffle that an ipfs.io-style public gateway would be a great asset for the community. datbase.org only seems to give you a preview, not the raw data.

What are the barriers to setting one up?

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