Feature request: More information about the hash lookup

[andrasfuchs]

If I enter an IPFS hash into the search field on the Explore page and click on the Explore button I got the result rather quickly if I'm lucky, but more often than not I need to sit there looking at the (nice looking) pumping-rotating three dots.

It would be nice to have continuous updates about the search itself to have a feel of progress. I'm not sure what is possible to show, perhaps the number of peers we asked the hash from, the number of positive or negative feedback we had from them, or the time left until potential timeout, but something meaningful would be nice.

[hacdias]

Hey @andrasfuchs! Thanks for the feedback. This is definitely a tricky one because we also don't have any information about the progress (as far as I know, will check). We also need to improve the loading screens on files page because of the lack of feedback.

I will investigate to see if we can get more info.

[andrasfuchs]

@hacdias Thank you! Let me know if I can be any help with that.

[andrasfuchs]

Hey @hacdias, did you have a chance to check if more info is available during the hash search?

[hacdias]

I recently made some updates to ipld-explorer-components and I believe it is possible to get more information of the progress, but not the classic 0-100%.

@vmx, what do you think about this?

[vmx]

@hacdias Do you know what it makes it so slow? I'd expect that the slow thing is finding the hash/peers. So the changes to IPLD (I guess that is what you are referring to) won't help.

[hacdias]

@vmx as you said, I believe it's finding the hash/peer what makes this slow. And as far as I know, there's no way to track the progress of that... Or there is?

[vmx]

@hacdias I don't know :)

[andrasfuchs]

Is there a way to ask the go-ipfs team about this?

Do I understand it right, that we would need a continuous update about the hash/peer search progress from the daemon, preferably through the API (and probably using some streaming technology like Websockets/Socket.io)?

[hacdias]

@andrasfuchs if that's a feature you'd like to have, you can open a new feature request.

[lidel]

Related prior art: visualizing the DHT lookup http://research.protocol.ai.ipns.localhost:8080/blog/2021/a-visualization-tool-for-the-ipfs-dht/

[andrasfuchs]

The above link is probably this: https://research.protocol.ai/blog/2021/a-visualization-tool-for-the-ipfs-dht/
;)

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[SgtPooki]

FYI that this may not be as vital now that queries return so quickly, but for queries that ultimately time out, we may want to have some interactive display like the one mentioned at https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmPXSyHHWqjyhrQjynzQAk4k912thZPcdBGMhsnMybcBRu/blog/2021/a-visualization-tool-for-the-ipfs-dht/