A Node.js P2P Network

Starting a seed

One or several seed servers are required to bootstrap the network. To start a seed server listening 6785:

var Seed = require('n2n').Seed;
 
var seed = new Seed();
seed.listen(6785);
console.log('Seed listening 6785...');

Starting a node

The following code snippet starts a node by connecting to the seed server seed.com:6785. If the node has a public IP, it will start a seed server listening 6785, as well.

var Node = require('n2n').Node;
var node = new Node(6785);
node.connect([{ host: 'seed.com', port: 6785 }]);

Once the node gets online, the event online will be emitted.

node.on('online', function () {
  console.log('I am online:', this.id);
});

Event node::online means another node gets online. A object representing the new node will be passed to event handlers:

node.on('node::online', function (newNode) {
  console.log('Someone is online:', newNode.id);
});

Communication

Nodes communicate via events.

Node#send(targetId:string, eventName:string, [data:*])

Emit a custom event called eventName on a specific node.

Node#broadcast(eventName:string, [data:*])

Emit a custom event called eventName on all nodes online.

Handling custom events

The name of custom events must be prefixed with 'node::'. If any, event data will be passed to event handlers:

node.on('node::hello', function (senderId) {
  console.log('Hello from', senderId);
});