Consider alternative to asCID signaling mechanism

[Gozala]

As per #212 making asCID enumerable creates a problem, it also seems to be motivating factor for some of the work in #211.

For the background me and @mikeal have chosen cid.asCID === cid as a signaling mechanism that value is CID with following properties:

1. Signal is retained when transferring value across the JS threads / realms because structural cloning respects self referentiality.
2. It has very low collision chance - It is very unlikely that codec will be passed a data where cid.asCID === cid is true, while user was meant to pass something unrelated.

At the time we also considered following alternative cid['/'] === cid.bytes (which was inspired by DAG-JSON spec, but ultimately chose cid.asCID === cid because it seemed like it had even less collision opportunity.

Maybe given recent problems it is worth considering switch to cid['/'] === cid.bytes which would address those problems

[achingbrain]

Pulling the below out of #214 (comment) as it's relevant here:

After looking at dag-json spec I'm realizing that / supposed to point to CID string not bytes so maybe this is not ideal. However general point still is:

1. We need an own (signalling) property with a very low collision probability.
2. This property should be retained across JS realms (implying it can not be symbol or getter)

So basically cid.wellKnownPropertyName === cid.bytes could check both boxes above and harder it is to type property name less likely it is to collide.

[achingbrain]

Does wellKnownPropertyName have to reference bytes? If the property name is '/', can the value be a string instead to be consistent with dag-json?

If consistency with dag-json doesn't add any value, and wellKnownPropertyName has to have a low probability of collision, why not call it something really unidiomatic like ___cid_bytes___?

That said, I've experimented with cid['/'] === cid.bytes locally and it does seem to solve the problem, so I'm happy with that if other people are.

[achingbrain]

I've put my cid['/'] === cid.bytes experiment up in #217

[achingbrain]

@Gozala do you think you'll have time to look at this? It's blocking updating multiformats in @ipld/dag-cbor, @ipld/dag-json and @ipld/car, which is in turn blocking ipfs-unixfs, ipfs-repo and ipfs itself and I'd really like to get a new version shipped in time for IPFS Camp.

[Gozala]

@Gozala do you think you'll have time to look at this? It's blocking updating multiformats in @ipld/dag-cbor, @ipld/dag-json and @ipld/car, which is in turn blocking ipfs-unixfs, ipfs-repo and ipfs itself and I'd really like to get a new version shipped in time for IPFS Camp.

I have reviewed #217 and provided my feedback. I'd love all those things to upgrade to new multiformats, yet I wonder if there is a way we can unblock that without having to rush this.

I have tried to capture some of the problems I see with the way CID / Link interface is defined and provided sketch of the alternative that I think would work better. It also seems more aligned with discussions that took place elsewhere. I would love to at least get your and @rvagg input on that.

It also may be worth considering name different from ['/'] because it used to be that JS engines were not as well optimized for such property access and that again may have unfortunate performance implications.

If consistency with dag-json doesn't add any value, and wellKnownPropertyName has to have a low probability of collision, why not call it something really unidiomatic like cid_bytes?

I think that is reasonable as well, although I do think that representing CIDs simply as boxed Uint8Array's e.g. { CID: Uint8Array } may have low enough collision probability and does seem to make more sense than having two fields pointing to same Uint8Array.

Finally I also have been thinking of a way to avoid having to box Uint8Arrays as per #214 (comment) and if such solution is found I think that would be the best of all.

[achingbrain]

It also may be worth considering name different from ['/'] because it used to be that JS engines were not as well optimized for such property access and that again may have unfortunate performance implications.

I ran a quick test, just accessing / and __cid on an object in a loop 10e9 times and could see no difference, so good news there.

#214 sounds good for further discussion.

[github-actions]

🎉 This issue has been resolved in version 10.0.2 🎉

The release is available on:

• npm package (@latest dist-tag)
• GitHub release

Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀