IDFromString and Pretty are not compatible

[rkapka]

Assume that id is a valid peer.ID. peer.IDFromString(id.Pretty()) generates an error, even though I'm just converting the multihash back and forth.

[rkapka]

Maybe there is a bug inside IDFromString?

[aarshkshah1992]

@rkapka

The IDFromString simply takes the peerID type converted to a string and not the string representation of the peerID.
Here's a sample example that works:

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-core/peer"
	"github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-peerstore/test"
)

func main() {
	pid := test.GeneratePeerIDs(1)[0]
	id, err := peer.IDFromString(string(pid))
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(id)
	
// Output
QmVvtzcZgCkMnSFf2dnrBPXrWuNFWNM9J3MpZQCvWPuVZf

I agree the API isn't intuitive here :/.

@Stebalien @raulk Any reason the API was designed this way ?

[Stebalien]

I'm not sure. We should probably rename IDFromString to IDFromByteString (keeping but deprecating the former).

[marten-seemann]

Indeed, this was a footgun, which is why we first deprecated and then removed it: libp2p/go-libp2p-core#274.