Dat Next Preview Release
Over the last few months we have been optimizing and improving the Dat command line tool as well as underlying dependencies, such as Hyperdrive, to prepare for publishing datasets on our Dat registry. We've released a preview of this new command line tool you can install it now!
Dat Next provides a more familiar command line interface, a lot of under the hood improvements, and an early preview of the Dat dataset registry commands. We are seeking feedback on Dat Next as we prepare to release it as our main command line tool for long term support.
During this process, we've improved our Node.js library. It is called dat-node on npm, and makes it easy to build applications that work with the command line tool and desktop app. Before 2016 ended, we released the new API for dat-node. If you are interested in building Dat applications on the file system, check it out!
Installing Dat Next
You can install Dat next with npm:
npm install -g dat-next
Once you get it installed run dat to see the usage guide or view more docs on Github.
New Commands:
Clone
dat clone provides a git-like command to download remote Dat archives:
Create
dat create creates a new Dat archive and imports all the files for you, getting it ready to share:
Sync all the things!
Once you have a Dat archive created (via clone or init/create) you can run dat sync in the archive folder to connect to the network and keep updated:
Under the Hood
We've been working on a lot of improvements to make your experience using Dat happier.
- Transfer data faster! In hyperdrive we have improved our replication algorithm for faster transfers with more improvements coming soon.
- A new Dat node module! We rewrote dat-node to use in Dat Next. Dat node makes it easier to start creating applications to use the Dat ecosystem.
- A new doctor is in town! We've added another test to dat-doctor to help with network debugging and fixing connection issues. The new doctor makes a house call to make sure you can transfer data to our public server before letting you test direct connections between you and another computer.
Dat Archive Registry
Dat Next provides a glimpse of our registry work started as part of our Knight Foundation grant. Once our registry is running you'll be able to publish and clone datasets, allowing you to use pretty names instead of a long dat:// link. To try it out you can run dat clone karissa/more-tweets-more-votes.
New registrations for the Dat registry are currently limited. If you are very interested, please send us a message and tell us about your use case.