A standard way to represent addresses that

  • support any standard network protocol
  • are self-describing
  • have a binary packed format
  • have a nice string representation
  • encapsulate well

Example

import { multiaddr } from '@multiformats/multiaddr'

const addr = multiaddr('/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/1234')
// Multiaddr(/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/1234)

addr.bytes
// <Uint8Array 04 7f 00 00 01 11 04 d2>

addr.toString()
// '/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/1234'

addr.protos()
// [
// {code: 4, name: 'ip4', size: 32},
// {code: 273, name: 'udp', size: 16}
// ]

// gives you an object that is friendly with what Node.js core modules expect for addresses
addr.nodeAddress()
// {
// family: 4,
// port: 1234,
// address: "127.0.0.1"
// }

addr.encapsulate('/sctp/5678')
// Multiaddr(/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/1234/sctp/5678)

Resolving DNSADDR addresses

DNSADDR is a spec that allows storing a TXT DNS record that contains a Multiaddr.

To resolve DNSADDR addresses, call the .resolve() function the multiaddr, optionally passing a DNS resolver.

DNSADDR addresses can resolve to multiple multiaddrs, since there is no limit to the number of TXT records that can be stored.

Example: Resolving DNSADDR Multiaddrs

import { multiaddr, resolvers } from '@multiformats/multiaddr'
import { dnsaddrResolver } from '@multiformats/multiaddr/resolvers'

resolvers.set('dnsaddr', dnsaddrResolver)

const ma = multiaddr('/dnsaddr/bootstrap.libp2p.io')

// resolve with a 5s timeout
const resolved = await ma.resolve({
signal: AbortSignal.timeout(5000)
})

console.info(resolved)
// [Multiaddr('/ip4/147.75...'), Multiaddr('/ip4/147.75...'), Multiaddr('/ip4/147.75...')...]

Example: Using a custom DNS resolver to resolve DNSADDR Multiaddrs

See the docs for @multiformats/dns for a full breakdown of how to specify multiple resolvers or resolvers that can be used for specific TLDs.

import { multiaddr } from '@multiformats/multiaddr'
import { dns } from '@multiformats/dns'
import { dnsJsonOverHttps } from '@multiformats/dns/resolvers'

const resolver = dns({
resolvers: {
'.': dnsJsonOverHttps('https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query')
}
})

const ma = multiaddr('/dnsaddr/bootstrap.libp2p.io')
const resolved = await ma.resolve({
dns: resolver
})

console.info(resolved)
// [Multiaddr('/ip4/147.75...'), Multiaddr('/ip4/147.75...'), Multiaddr('/ip4/147.75...')...]

References

Re-exports Resolver