Send data to a peer

[TotalTaxAmount]

Hello,
What would be the best approach to send data to one peer on the network. I do not need a response I just want to send some data to a peer without expecting a response or anything. Should I just use request_response with () as a response or is there a better way to do it?

[dariusc93]

Hey! One way might be to use gossipsub or floodsub, though if youre just sending it to one peer, using Oneshot connection handler might be the easiest solution to send a message to a peer without awaiting on a response. Of course, you can write your own handler if needed. You could use request-response if you wish to have some generic acknowledgement of the message being sent.

[TotalTaxAmount]

Thanks! Using something like Oneshot when I send a message to a peer would it open a new stream (I am using TCP) every time? Or would libp2p keep the stream open?

[dariusc93]

If I recall, it opens a new one for every message sent (though there is a configurable limit). If you want to keep the stream open or send using the stream directly, you could give libp2p-stream a try although do know there is a slight bug that may cause a deadlock when sending large amount of data (see #5410). This is assuming you dont want to write your own connection handler.

[TotalTaxAmount]

I guess I could try writing my own handler, would I be able to set something up to send messages without closing the stream? If so could you point me to some examples or docs for handlers? (This is my first time using libp2p)

Edit: Also in the future I will have a version of my app that is written in Java, it doesn't seem like libp2p-stream has a Java counterpart.