js-IPFS deprecation / replaced by Helia 🌞

TL;DR: js-IPFS is being deprecated, and has been superseded by Helia.

There are exciting times ahead for IPFS in JS. Some of you may have already heard of Helia, the new implementation that’s designed as a composable, lightweight, and modern replacement for js-IPFS.

It has a simplified API which can be extended by other modules depending on the requirements of your application such as @helia/unixfs, @helia/ipns, @helia/dag-cbor and others.

It ships with the latest and greatest libp2p, which means it has the best connectivity options, including the new WebTransport and WebRTC transports that dramatically improve the connectivity options for browser environments.

js-IPFS is in the process of being deprecated so you should port your apps to Helia to receive bug fixes, features, and performance improvements moving forwards.

:books: Learn more about this deprecation or how to migrate.

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How does the migration to Helia effect projects making use of ipfs-http-client to control an external Kubo/go-ipfs node?

I have a couple projects using that configuration. Should I stick with ipfs-http-client for now? Does Helia have a replacement interface?

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If you’re using Kubo’s HTTP RPC API, you should switch to kubo-rpc-client - it was forked from ipfs-http-client a few months back so is a drop-in replacement and is where all the Kubo compatibility fixes go.

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There is a duplicate post ⛔️ js-IPFS deprecation / replaced by Helia 🌞 | IPFS Blog & News - #2 by BigLep from the blog post, but we’ll make this this the canonical place to comment.