Is this suitable for the browser?

[JustinDrake]

I am interested in encrypting and decrypting IPFS communications client-side and wondered if js-libp2p-secio is suitable for the browser. Some of my concerns are:

• When doing npm install, I notice that some dependencies have C/C++ that needs compiling. Presumably those are Node.JS-only dependencies
• The code is written with ES6 which will need compiling down to ES5 for wide browser support.

On the other hand, I see there is a test file called browser.js described as secio browser <-> nodejs so this is promising!

[dignifiedquire]

The code should run out of the box on latest Firefox and Chrome. Even without transpiling. The major blocker for other browsers is webcrypto, which is being tracked here: libp2p/js-libp2p-crypto#18

[JustinDrake]

Thanks for pointing out the webcrypto dependency. When you write "out of the box" how does that work? Should I be using http://browserify.org?

[dignifiedquire]

When you write "out of the box" how does that work? Should I be using http://browserify.org?

Yes you can either use webpack or browserify. You can find examples for js-ipfs on how to do this here, which has the same setup as the js-libp2p modules.