## # Simple ping tutorial ## ## Hi all, welcome to the first nim-libp2p tutorial! ## ## !!! tips "" ## This tutorial is for everyone who is interested in building peer-to-peer applications. No Nim programming experience is needed. ## ## To give you a quick overview, **Nim** is the programming language we are using and **nim-libp2p** is the Nim implementation of [libp2p](https://libp2p.io/), a modular library that enables the development of peer-to-peer network applications. ## ## Hope you'll find it helpful in your journey of learning. Happy coding! ;) ## ## ## Before you start ## The only prerequisite here is [Nim](https://nim-lang.org/), the programming language with a Python-like syntax and a performance similar to C. Detailed information can be found [here](https://nim-lang.org/docs/tut1.html). ## ## Install Nim via their [official website](https://nim-lang.org/install.html). ## Check Nim's installation via `nim --version` and its package manager Nimble via `nimble --version`. ## ## You can now install the latest version of `nim-libp2p`: ## ```bash ## nimble install libp2p@#master ## ``` ## ## ## A simple ping application ## We'll start by creating a simple application, which is starting two libp2p [switch](https://docs.libp2p.io/concepts/stream-multiplexing/#switch-swarm), and pinging each other using the [Ping](https://docs.libp2p.io/concepts/protocols/#ping) protocol. ## ## !!! tips "" ## You can find the source of this tutorial (and other tutorials) in the [libp2p/examples](https://github.com/status-im/nim-libp2p/tree/master/examples) folder! ## ## Let's create a `part1.nim`, and import our dependencies: import chronos import libp2p import libp2p/protocols/ping ## [chronos](https://github.com/status-im/nim-chronos) the asynchronous framework used by `nim-libp2p` ## ## Next, we'll create an helper procedure to create our switches. A switch needs a bit of configuration, and it will be easier to do this configuration only once: proc createSwitch(ma: MultiAddress, rng: ref HmacDrbgContext): Switch = var switch = SwitchBuilder .new() .withRng(rng) # Give the application RNG .withAddress(ma) # Our local address(es) .withTcpTransport() # Use TCP as transport .withMplex() # Use Mplex as muxer .withNoise() # Use Noise as secure manager .build() return switch ## This will create a switch using [Mplex](https://docs.libp2p.io/concepts/stream-multiplexing/) as a multiplexer, Noise to secure the communication, and TCP as an underlying transport. ## ## You can of course tweak this, to use a different or multiple transport, or tweak the configuration of Mplex and Noise, but this is some sane defaults that we'll use going forward. ## ## ## Let's now start to create our main procedure: proc main() {.async.} = let rng = newRng() localAddress = MultiAddress.init("/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/0").tryGet() pingProtocol = Ping.new(rng=rng) ## We created some variables that we'll need for the rest of the application: the global `rng` instance, our `localAddress`, and an instance of the `Ping` protocol. ## The address is in the [MultiAddress](https://github.com/multiformats/multiaddr) format. The port `0` means "take any port available". ## ## `tryGet` is procedure which is part of [nim-result](https://github.com/arnetheduck/nim-result/), that will throw an exception if the supplied MultiAddress is invalid. ## ## We can now create our two switches: let switch1 = createSwitch(localAddress, rng) switch2 = createSwitch(localAddress, rng) switch1.mount(pingProtocol) await switch1.start() await switch2.start() ## We've **mounted** the `pingProtocol` on our first switch. This means that the first switch will actually listen for any ping requests coming in, and handle them accordingly. ## ## Now that we've started the nodes, they are listening for incoming peers. ## We can find out which port was attributed, and the resulting local addresses, by using `switch1.peerInfo.addrs`. ## ## We'll **dial** the first switch from the second one, by specifying it's **Peer ID**, it's **MultiAddress** and the **`Ping` protocol codec**: let conn = await switch2.dial(switch1.peerInfo.peerId, switch1.peerInfo.addrs, PingCodec) ## We now have a `Ping` connection setup between the second and the first switch, we can use it to actually ping the node: # ping the other node and echo the ping duration echo "ping: ", await pingProtocol.ping(conn) # We must close the connection ourselves when we're done with it await conn.close() ## And that's it! Just a little bit of cleanup: shutting down the switches, waiting for them to stop, and we'll call our `main` procedure: await allFutures(switch1.stop(), switch2.stop()) # close connections and shutdown all transports waitFor(main()) ## You can now run this program using `nim c -r part1.nim`, and you should see the dialing sequence, ending with a ping output. ## ## In the [next tutorial](tutorial_2_customproto.md), we'll look at how to create our own custom protocol.