Lesson Feedback%3A Regular Files API - Lesson 4 (Read the contents of a file)

[heaversm]

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URL of the lesson that's confusing:

https://proto.school/regular-files-api/04

What's confusing about this lesson?

In your example, calling toString() returns a readable string. In my own prototype - uploading a plaintext .txt file and then trying to read that back from the CID path results in an array of numbers using the same code:

const ipfsID = { path: 'QmUUSLeERmuFa63g6aFx7niouQyRUbHq81VXBgiCadPVZt' };
const bufferedContents = await toBuffer(ipfs.cat(ipfsID.path));
console.log(bufferedContents); //ouputs "Uint8Array(57)[[ 76, 105, 110, 107, 101, 100, 73, 110, 32, 45...]"
const stringContents = bufferedContents.toString();
console.log(stringContents); //outputs "76, 105, 110, 107, 101, 100, 73, 110, 32, 45..."

I realized this is because an uploaded plaintext file (say, via a file upload box) doesn't get stored as text, it gets stored as a file, so to read its contents you have to do something like

const fileURL = `https://ipfs.io/ipfs/${ipfsID.path}`;

fetch(fileURL)
.then( data => data.text() )
.then( fileContents => {
  setFileContents(fileContents);
  setImgURL(null);

What additional context could we provide to help you succeed?

how to read the contents of an uploaded .txt file to a string from an IPFS CID Path

What other feedback would you like to share about ProtoSchool?

Pretty good! Enjoying it.