2022 IPFS Thing - spec discussion

[SgtPooki]

tbd

[SgtPooki]

Problems

• Count is not scalable
• Supporting multiple status filters in a single query is difficult and may force pinning providers into certain implementations

Missing

• Paths (more info from @lidel)
• Pinning of IPNS
• Pinning a CAR

Required

Removing

PinResults

• Count (see #86)
  • Visible in settings page in IPFS Desktop (Can get metrics)
  • Command line for Kubo ipfs stat ... (No metrics)
  • Currently used for pagination implementations: Are there more pins I can get by calling the API again?
    • Not required for pagination: If returned results count <= max_results, there is more content.
  • We can modify clients so that we always add 1 to count (when there is more content) so existing logic is supported.
• Requirement for before/after to be Dates.
  • https://github.com/ipfs/kubo/issues/8762

Updating/Editing (Without breaking changes)

• Deprecate count
• "hacky" count support in clients. (@sgtpooki to supply details)

Updating/Editing (With breaking changes; v2)

• Remove count
• Add property for "nextToken" or similar name to act as cursor
• ~~Count could be replaced with "hasMore" boolean flag.~~
• Update before so that we support arbitrary before tokens. This means they can be:
  • Dates
  • ... anything.
    • In this case, the Pinning Provider would need to return the before tokens in response so client could continue a query when there are more results.
    • Don't necessarily need before & after.
• Spec should only require providers to allow a single status string, but they should also support array of statuses.
• Optional properties:
  • Mark 'match' property as optional
  • Update docs/spec to more 'forcefully' encourage properties in the 'meta' field
    • % of data/dag for a CID that has pinned or been processed.

Discrepancies/Problems

• Cluster cannot paginate
• Cluster cannot do count

---

Car file pinning (@Jorropo to add details here)

• Does pinning car files sound reasonable?
  • Pin car file roots
  • Spec shouldn't require anything beyond the requirement

[BigLep]

2022-08-04 Implementers Sync conversation (as I understood it - please correct if this is wrong):

1. Someone (Piñata?) take the change in this repo and Cc @lidel. The PR needs to document how we do pagination, removing the need for the count to be a numeric value, but instead being a boolean type thing (or whatever needs to happen, for clients to still work).
2. Re-generation of clients, focusing on https://github.com/ipfs/go-pinning-service-http-client (used by Kubo)