OrbitDB

OrbitDB is a serverless, distributed, peer-to-peer database. OrbitDB uses IPFS as its data storage and Libp2p Pubsub to automatically sync databases with peers. It’s an eventually consistent database that uses Merkle-CRDTs for conflict-free database writes and merges making OrbitDB an excellent choice for p2p and decentralized apps, blockchain applications and local-first web applications.

OrbitDB provides various types of databases for different data models and use cases:

• events: an immutable (append-only) log with traversable history. Useful for “latest N” use cases or as a message queue.
• documents: a document database to which JSON documents can be stored and indexed by a specified key. Useful for building search indices or version controlling documents and data.
• keyvalue: a key-value database just like your favourite key-value database.
• keyvalue-indexed: key-value data indexed in a Level key-value database.

All databases are implemented on top of OrbitDB’s OpLog, an immutable, cryptographically verifiable, operation-based conflict-free replicated data structure (CRDT) for distributed systems. OpLog is formalized in the paper Merkle-CRDTs. You can also easily extend OrbitDB by implementing and using a custom data model benefitting from the same properties as the default data models provided by the underlying Merkle-CRDTs.

This is the Javascript implementation and it works both in Browsers and Node.js with support for Linux, OS X, and Windows.

A Go implementation is developed and maintained by the Berty project at berty/go-orbit-db.

Installation

Install OrbitDB and its dependencies:

npm install @orbitdb/core helia

Browser <script> tag

OrbitDB can be loaded in the browser using the distributed js file with the <script/> tag. OrbitDB is the global namespace and all external functions are available via this namespace:

<script>/path/to/orbitdb.min.js</script>

Quick Start

If you want to get up and running with OrbitDB quickly, install and follow the instructions in the @orbitdb/quickstart module.

Usage

If you’re using @orbitdb/core to develop browser or Node.js applications, use it as a module with the javascript instance of IPFS.

import { createHelia } from 'helia'
import { createOrbitDB } from '@orbitdb/core'
import { gossipsub } from "@chainsafe/libp2p-gossipsub";
import { identify } from "@libp2p/identify";
import { createLibp2p } from 'libp2p'

const Libp2pOptions = {
  services: {
    pubsub: gossipsub({
      // neccessary to run a single peer
      allowPublishToZeroTopicPeers: true
    }),
    identify: identify()
  }
}

;(async function () {
  const libp2p = await createLibp2p({ ...Libp2pOptions })
  const ipfs = await createHelia({libp2p})
  const orbitdb = await createOrbitDB({ ipfs })

  // Create / Open a database. Defaults to db type "events".
  const db = await orbitdb.open("hello")
  
  const address = db.address
  console.log(address)
  // "/orbitdb/zdpuAkstgbTVGHQmMi5TC84auhJ8rL5qoaNEtXo2d5PHXs2To"
  // The above address can be used on another peer to open the same database

  // Listen for updates from peers
  db.events.on("update", async entry => {
    console.log(entry)
    const all = await db.all()
    console.log(all)
  })

  // Add an entry
  const hash = await db.add("world")
  console.log(hash)

  // Query
  for await (const record of db.iterator()) {
    console.log(record)
  }
  
  await db.close()
  await orbitdb.stop()
  await ipfs.stop()
})()

To configure your IPFS instance for persistency and Libp2p to connect to peers, see Creating a Helia instance and the Default Libp2p Configurations in @orbitdb/quickstart for examples.

Documentation

Use the Getting Started guide for an initial introduction to OrbitDB.

You can find more advanced topics in our docs covering:

• Databases
• Storage
• Identities
• Access Controllers
• Connecting Peers
• Replication
• Oplog

API

See https://api.orbitdb.org for the full API documentation.

Development

Run Tests

npm run test

Build

npm run build

Benchmark

node benchmarks/orbitdb-events.js

See benchmarks/ for more benchmarks.

API

To build the API documentation, run:

npm run build:docs

Documentation is output to ./docs/api.

Other implementations

• Golang: berty/go-orbit-db
• Python: orbitdb/py-orbit-db-http-client

If you know of any other repos that ought to be included in this section, please open a PR and add them.

Contributing

Take a look at our organization-wide Contributing Guide. You’ll find most of your questions answered there.

If you want to code but don’t know where to start, check out the issues labelled “help wanted”.

Sponsors

The development of OrbitDB has been sponsored by:

• Protocol Labs
• Haja Networks
• Maintainer Mountaineer
• OrbitDB Open Collective

If you want to sponsor developers to work on OrbitDB, please donate to our OrbitDB Open Collective or reach out to @haadcode.

License

MIT © 2015-2023 Protocol Labs Inc., Haja Networks Oy, OrbitDB Community