Transport and protocol upgrade system of *libp2p*. This crate contains all the core traits and mechanisms of the transport system of *libp2p*. # The `Transport` trait The main trait that this crate provides is `Transport`, which provides the `dial` and `listen_on` methods and can be used to dial or listen on a multiaddress. The `swarm` crate itself does not provide any concrete (ie. non-dummy, non-adapter) implementation of this trait. It is implemented on structs that are provided by external crates, such as `TcpConfig` from `tcp-transport`, `UdpConfig`, or `WebsocketConfig` (note: as of the writing of this documentation, the last two structs don't exist yet). Each implementation of `Transport` only supports *some* multiaddress protocols, for example the `TcpConfig` struct only supports multiaddresses that look like `/ip*/*.*.*.*/tcp/*`. It is possible to group two implementations of `Transport` with the `or_transport` method, in order to obtain a single object that supports the protocols of both objects at once. This can be done multiple times in a row in order to chain as many implementations as you want. // TODO: right now only tcp-transport exists, we need to add an example for chaining // multiple transports once that makes sense # Connection upgrades Once a socket has been opened with a remote through a `Transport`, it can be *upgraded*. This consists in negotiating a protocol with the remote (through `multistream-select`), and applying that protocol on the socket. A potential connection upgrade is represented with the `ConnectionUpgrade` trait. The trait consists in a protocol name plus a method that turns the socket into an `Output` object whose nature and type is specific to each upgrade. There exists three kinds of connection upgrades: middlewares, muxers, and actual protocols. ## Middlewares Examples of middleware connection upgrades include `PlainTextConfig` (dummy upgrade) or `SecioConfig` (encyption layer, provided by the `secio` crate). The output of a middleware connection upgrade must implement the `AsyncRead` and `AsyncWrite` traits, just like sockets do. A middleware can be applied on a transport by using the `with_upgrade` method of the `Transport` trait. The return value of this method also implements the `Transport` trait, which means that you can call `dial()` and `listen_on()` on it in order to directly obtain an upgraded connection or a listener that will yield upgraded connections. An error is produced if the remote doesn't support the protocol corresponding to the connection upgrade. ```rust extern crate libp2p_swarm; extern crate libp2p_tcp_transport; extern crate tokio_core; use libp2p_swarm::Transport; let tokio_core = tokio_core::reactor::Core::new().unwrap(); let tcp_transport = libp2p_tcp_transport::TcpConfig::new(tokio_core.handle()); let upgraded = tcp_transport.with_upgrade(libp2p_swarm::PlainTextConfig); // upgraded.dial(...) // automatically applies the plain text protocol on the socket ``` ## Muxers The concept of *muxing* consists in using a single stream as if it was multiple substreams. If the output of the connection upgrade instead implements the `StreamMuxer` and `Clone` traits, then you can turn the `UpgradedNode` struct into a `ConnectionReuse` struct by calling `ConnectionReuse::from(upgraded_node)`. The `ConnectionReuse` struct then implements the `Transport` trait, and can be used to dial or listen to multiaddresses, just like any other transport. The only difference is that dialing a node will try to open a new substream on an existing connection instead of opening a new one every time. TODO: add an example once the multiplex pull request is merged ## Actual protocols *Actual protocols* work the same way as middlewares, except that their `Output` doesn't implement the `AsyncRead` and `AsyncWrite` traits. This means that that the return value of `with_upgrade` does **not** implement the `Transport` trait and thus cannot be used as a transport. However the `UpgradedNode` struct returned by `with_upgrade` still provides methods named `dial` and `listen_on`, which will yield you respectively a `Future` or a `Stream`, which you can use to obtain the `Output`. This `Output` can then be used in a protocol-specific way to use the protocol. ```rust extern crate futures; extern crate libp2p_ping; extern crate libp2p_swarm; extern crate libp2p_tcp_transport; extern crate tokio_core; use futures::Future; use libp2p_ping::Ping; use libp2p_swarm::Transport; let mut core = tokio_core::reactor::Core::new().unwrap(); let ping_finished_future = libp2p_tcp_transport::TcpConfig::new(core.handle()) // We have a `TcpConfig` struct that implements `Transport`, and apply a `Ping` upgrade on it. .with_upgrade(Ping) // TODO: right now the only available protocol is ping, but we want to replace it with // something that is more simple to use .dial(libp2p_swarm::Multiaddr::new("127.0.0.1:12345").unwrap()).unwrap_or_else(|_| panic!()) .and_then(|(mut pinger, service)| { pinger.ping().map_err(|_| panic!()).select(service).map_err(|_| panic!()) }); // Runs until the ping arrives. core.run(ping_finished_future).unwrap(); ``` ## Grouping protocols You can use the `.or_upgrade()` method to group multiple upgrades together. The return value also implements the `ConnectionUpgrade` trait and will choose one of the protocols amongst the ones supported.