iWant - CLI Based Decentralized Peer To Peer File Sharing

A commandline tool for searching and downloading files in LAN network, without any central server.

Features

Decentralized : There is no central server hosting files. Therefore, no central point of failure
Easy discovery of files: As easy as searching for something in Google.
File download from multiple peers: If the seeder fails/leaves the group, leecher will continue to download from another seeder in the network
Directory download: Supports downloading directories
Resume download: Resume download from where you left off.
Consistent data: Any changes(modification, deletion, addition) made to files inside the shared folder will be instantly reflected in the network
Cross Platform: Works in Linux/Windows/Mac. More testing needs to be done in Mac

Why I built this ?

I like the idea of typing some filename in the terminal and download it if people around me have it.
No third party registration.
No crazy configuration.
Wanted it to be cross platform.
Zero downtime.
No browser.. just terminal
For fun ¯\(ツ)/¯

Installation

pip install iwant

Or, if you download from source

python setup.py install --user

Works on Python2 only

System Dependencies
Make sure, you have the following system dependencies installed:

libffi-dev
libssl-dev

Usage

iWant.

    A commandline tool for searching and downloading files in LAN network, without any central server.


Usage:
    iwanto start
    iwanto search <name>
    iwanto download <hash>
    iwanto share <path>
    iwanto download to <destination>
    iwanto view config
    iwanto --version

Options:
    -h --help                           Show this screen.
    --version                           Show version.
    start                               This starts the iwant server in your system
    search <name>                       Discovering files in the network. Example: iwanto search batman
    download <hash>                     Downloads the file from the network
    share <path>                        Change your shared folder
    view config                         View shared and download folder
    download to <destination>           Change download folder

Note: Shared and Download folder cannot be the same

How to run
Run iwanto start (this runs the iwant service).

Running client
To run services like, search, download, view config and change config, open up another terminal and make sure that iwant server is running.

Running server
In windows, admin access is required to run the server

iwanto start

Search files
Type the name of file ;) (P.S No need of accurate names)

iwanto search <filename>

Example:

iwanto search "slicon valey"

Download files
To download the file , just enter the hash of the file you get after searching.

iwanto download <hash of the file>

Example:

iwanto download b8f67e90097c7501cc0a9f1bb59e6443

Change shared folder
Change shared folder anytime (Even when iwant service is running)

iwanto share <path>

Example:

iwanto share /home/User/Movies/

In windows, give quotes:

iwanto share "C:\Users\xyz\books\"

Change downloads folder
Change download folder anytime

iwanto download to <path>

Example:

iwanto download to /home/User/Downloads

In windows, give quotes:

iwanto download to "C:\User\Downloads"

View shared/donwload folder

iwanto view config

How does it work ?
As soon as the program starts, it spawns the election daemon, folder monitoring daemon and server daemon.

The election daemon takes care of the following activities
- Manages the consensus.
- Notifies the server daemon as soon as there is a leader change.
- It coordinates with other peers in the network regarding contesting elections, leader unavailability, network failure, split brain situation etc.
- It uses multicast for peer discovery. The consensus description is mentioned here
When the folder monitoring daemon starts, it performs the following steps
- Indexes all the files in the shared folder
- Updates the entries in the database
- Informs the server about the indexed files and folders.
- Any changes made in the shared folder will trigger the folder monitoring daemon to index the modified files, update the database and then inform the server about the changes
The iwant client talks to the server daemon when the user wishes to:
- search for files
- download files
- change shared folder
- change download folder
The server daemon receives commands from iwant client and updates from file monitoring and election daemon.
- Updates received from folder monitoring daemon is fowarded to the leader. For example: indexed files/folders information.
- Updates received from the election daemon like leader change event, triggers the server to forward the indexed files/folders information to the new leader
- Queries received from the iwant client like file search is forwarded to the leader, who then performs fuzzy search on the metadata it received from other peers and returns a list containing (filename, size, checksum)
- Queries received from the iwant client like file download is forwarded to the leader, who forwards the roothash of the file/folder along with the list of peers who have the file. The server daemon then intiates download process with peers mentioned in the peers list.
- Updates received from the iwant client like changing shared folder, triggers the server daemon to make sure that the folder monitoring daemon indexes the new folder and after indexing is complete, the server daemon updates the leader with the new indexed files/folders meta information.