The problem Hashdrive solves

problem

Ipfs is awesome , but is it really required to open a web browser to upload files into filecoin.
what if there is only one command like

git push

git pull

to upload and get files

Solution 💡

Hashdrive solves the problem, we provide a CLI tool that user can download and use it anywhere , in any directory or filepath to upload the file just with one command ,

features📃

-t :- updating the web3.storage API token
-u :- upload file to web3.storage
-d :- download file
-ls :- list all file structures in present directory
-pwd :- returns the present working directory
-cd :- change directory

Challenges we ran into

File structures

We have decided to upload only files into the web3.storage , and store the file structure in a data file .This was required for

ls

,

cd

and

pwd

commands , where we have to traverse through the file structure, Due to this there were huge conflicts on the file storage and retrieval process.

• A Data file to manage entire file structure , and the CIDs of all files was made using solidity smart contract , so that the CIDs are safe and can't be accessed by any attackers
  

commands with multiple arguments

since our solution is a CLI application , one of the major problem that we faced was the situation when user enter multiple commands and functionalities at once

• closely studied the commands that need to be mutually excllusive , and those that can be used together , and made the logical conditions to support all the possible and valid command inputs

Downloading the file

for downloading files from ipfs we just have a get function , as a result whenever we type the function we open a webbrowser , hence the file does not directly get download but opens a webpage , from which we have to download

• used

  window.location

  to downloiad the file directly without the browser

PowerShell says "execution of scripts is disabled on this system."

while installing package as a cli tool , powershell raised an error due to the insufficient permissions

• Running the following command solved the problem

  Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

  
  here we have signed the execution policy for the existing user , thereby alowing node to install the cli tool
  stack overflow link