Swarm Bee Network (Decentralized Storage) Full Backend Guide

A detailed documentation with images of running a bee node on your local machine. Also some additional references and notes for bee.js library.

Installation and Running

Installation and Running of the Bee Node

Skip Step 1 and 2 if you are a Ubuntu User. Only windows users follow step 1 and step 2.

Step 1

Install Virtual Box - https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads 

Step 2

Set up Virtual Box using Ubuntu LTS - https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop 

Step 3

Install Bee Client for Swarm

    wget https://github.com/ethersphere/bee/releases/download/v1.7.0/bee_1.7.0_amd64.deb
    sudo dpkg -i bee_1.7.0_amd64.deb 

Common Error Handling

If by any chance your dpkg is locked, and throws an error in installation, then hard reset can be done.

Remove dpkg lock, lock-frontend and caches.

    sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock 
    sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend 
    sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock 

Install dpkg

    sudo apt update 
    sudo dpkg --configure -a

Step 4

Try running bee node

    bee start 

Set up password and confirm it. Remember the password.


On first starting service of the bee client, an error will be thrown,

got error factory fail: disabled chain backend, shutting down... factory fail: disabled chain backend  

The error occurs due to unavailability of Genosis Node RPC in config file of bee(etc/bee/bee.yaml).

Configure bee.yaml

Configure bee.yaml file for file storage directory, nat-address, swap-endpoints

    sudo nano /etc/bee/bee.yaml

Data Directory

data-dir : /var/lib/bee 

This key contains value of the place where you will store your data and contribute to the network by storing other data.

By default this location is /var/lib/bee

Full Node/Light Node

full-node : true

Set it to true if you want to participate in the Swarm Network and earn more bzz for storage.

Nat Address

nat-addr : “<YourIPAddress>/1634” 

Swap Endpoints

swap-endpoints : "Paste your RPC URL here within “”". 

swap-endpoints : https://gno.getblock.io/mainnet/?api_key=b338ee33- b3e3-be33-bee5-b335b555b555

Mainnet/Testnet

mainnet : true 

By default it is set to false, make it true to interact with the swarm network.

You can use Goerli Testnet for faucets.

Swap Initial Deposit

swap-initial-deposit : Put value according to BZZ in your account chequebook. 

You can also swap mainnet to false and swap-initial-deposit to 0 and test it over the Georli Testnet.

ENS - To host the website on Swarm

Use ENS resolver-options

resolver-options: ["https://mainnet.infura.io/v3/<<your-api-key>>"] 

(Please go through other key-value pairs for better understanding of the changes you can make in the bee.yaml file. I have provided all the important once.)

Get RPC Node

You can use these nodes for running your bee node.

RPC Node endpoint will look like :

https://gno.getblock.io/mainnet/?api_key=b338ee33-b3e3-be33-bee5-b335b555b555 

Note - do not share your api key.

You can also setup your own Genosis node :

https://docs.gnosischain.com/clients/gnosis-chain-node-openethereum-and-nethermind 

I did not set up my own Genosis Node due to limited resources.

Fund Your Node

For Mainnet

https://docs.ethswarm.org/docs/installation/fund-your-node 

For Testnet

Join Swarm discord, Google Search

Swarm discord

Click the first link

Visit #faucet channel and verify your account. then

/faucet sprinkle <Your georli/genosis Chain Address> 

Run Bee Node

With everything set up, now type in terminal

bee start 

Congrats you have your bee node up and running now

Bee API Reference

Once your Bee node is running, a HTTP API is enabled for you to interact with.

By default this is on port 1633 (Do not change value of api-addr:1633 in bee.yaml)

https://docs.ethswarm.org/api/

Get all items

  GET /api/items

Parameter	Type	Description
api_key	string	Required. Your API key

Get item

  GET /api/items/${id}

Parameter	Type	Description
id	string	Required. Id of item to fetch

add(num1, num2)

Takes two numbers and returns the sum.

You can use this bee api client to upload and download data. All Post, Get, Put, etc. requests are given in the api documentation so there is no need to recall every

You can check you bee api client -

    curl http://localhost:1633 

It will return

Ethereum Swarm Bee

means the node and the api are running successfully.

Some references

You can also take reference form HACKMD Documentation on upload with postage stamp

https://hackmd.io/@ethswarm/ryyP9EDHw 

Bee JS Documentation

There exists a bee.js library

https://github.com/ethersphere/bee-js  

NPM documentation of bee - Documentation

Here are some examples of using beejs -

Examples

Ethersphere examples

https://github.com/ethersphere/examples-js  

Note

To upload files on the swarm network using your website frontend, you require a bee node running on a local machine or cloud host.

Use axios-fetch

https://github.com/lifeomic/axios-fetch

(Supported by fetch based HTTP client)

Please Note - Bee.js is a fetch-based HTTP client that does not supports features like upload progress so you can use axios-fetch.