Store a directory of files

You can use NFT.Storage to store any files needed for your NFT projects. This guide shows a simple example of uploading a directory full of files using a script written in Node.js with the nft.storage JavaScript client library.

To follow along, you'll need Node.js version 16 or greater.

Creating a project#

Create a new directory and use npm to initalize a new JavaScript project.

mkdir store-directory
cd store-directory
npm init -y

This will create a package.json file with the standard "new project" defaults.

Next, add the nft.storage and files-from-path packages to your project's dependencies:

npm install nft.storage files-from-path

Adding the upload code#

Create a file called storeDirectory.mjs and add the following code:

import { NFTStorage } from 'nft.storage'
import { filesFromPath } from 'files-from-path'
import path from 'path'

const token = 'YOUR_API_TOKEN'

async function main() {
  // you'll probably want more sophisticated argument parsing in a real app
  if (process.argv.length !== 3) {
    console.error(`usage: ${process.argv[0]} ${process.argv[1]} <directory-path>`)
  }
  const directoryPath = process.argv[2]
  const files = filesFromPath(directoryPath, {
    pathPrefix: path.resolve(directoryPath), // see the note about pathPrefix below
    hidden: true, // use the default of false if you want to ignore files that start with '.'
  })

  const storage = new NFTStorage({ token })

  console.log(`storing file(s) from ${path}`)
  const cid = await storage.storeDirectory(files)
  console.log({ cid })

  const status = await storage.status(cid)
  console.log(status)
}
main()

The filesFromPath function is provided by the files-from-path package. It will read the contents of a directory into File objects that can be passed into the NFT.Storage client.

The pathPrefix option tells filesFromPath to remove the input path from the filenames of the File objects it creates. For example, if you're reading in files from a directory called example, calling filesFromPath without the pathPrefix argument would result in File objects with filenames like example/file1.txt, example/file2.txt, and so on. If you set the pathPrefix option to example, you'll get file1.txt, file2.txt, etc. instead. This results in a final IPFS URI of ipfs://<directory-cid>/file1.txt instead of ipfs://<directory-cid>/example/file1.txt.

Notice that we're calling path.resolve on the directoryPath argument before using it as our pathPrefix. filesFromPath will compare the pathPrefix we give it to the absolute path of the file, so using path.resolve ensures that we give it the correct input, even if the user passed in a relative path at the command line.

You'll need to replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your NFT.Storage API key. If you don't yet have an API key, see the Quickstart guide.

Running the script#

You should now be able to run the script and pass in the path to a directory:

node storeDirectory.mjs 'path_to_your_directory'

When the upload is complete, the CID and status of the upload will be printed to the console.