dat

dat

Dat is a version-controlled, decentralized data sync tool for collaboration between data people and data systems.

Try the dat interactive tutorial here: http://try-dat.com

Have questions? Join #dat on freenode. Chat logs are available here

Windows	Mac/Linux

Documentation

• Commandline API
• JavaScript API
• The Cookbook!
• Whitepaper
• Internal design

Installation

Step 1: Install Node.js from the Node website. (Installing Node via Homebrew can cause problems, and is not recommended.)

We Recommend Node version 0.12 or above. You can check your version of Node by running node -v on the command line.

$ node -v
v0.12...

Step 2: Install dat

npm install dat -g

The -g means "install globally" which makes the dat command available in your command line path.

If it all worked correctly, you should see something like this when you type dat:

usage: dat <command(s)> [--flag] [--key=value]

commands:
  init        initialize a new dat store in a directory
  status      show current status
  log         view a list of recent changes
  clone       download and make a full copy of a remote dat
  ...

Using dat

You can think of dat as a streaming interface for data on the filesystem.

Create a new directory (e.g., mkdir dat-test) and open that directory (e.g., cd dat-test). Make this directory into a dat repository by running dat init. Now you can import a CSV or newline-delimited JSON file to the dat repository (for example, an exoplanet orbit CSV file) by running dat import http://exoplanets.org/csv-files/exoplanets.csv -d exoplanets.

Once imported, the data can be forked, diffed, merged, replicated, destroyed, etc.—see a list of all dat commands for more.

Run the tutorial at http://try-dat.com for a quick start to the basic collaborative command-line use cases.

Troubleshooting

"Error: Module did not self-register": Try reinstalling dat. This is caused by a leveldown-prebuilt leftover from a previous version of dat. See #370.

npm uninstall dat -g
npm install dat -g

I'm getting a problem with 'leveldown' when trying to install.: Try adding --unsafe-perm to the installation command. See #374.

npm install dat -g --unsafe-perm

Dat is still in beta. If you have any trouble, it's probably because it's broken!

Please tell us by opening an issue here or asking us a question in #dat on IRC in Freenode.

About dat

The dat module is designed with a small-core philosophy. It defines an API for reading, writing, and syncing datasets, and is implemented using Node.js.

Internally, dat has two kinds of data storage: tabular and blob. The default tabular data store is LevelDB and the default blob store stores files on a content-addressable blob store. Both of these default backends can be swapped out for other backends.

Developers

If it's broken, you can probably help fix it!

• Start by checking out our help wanted issue tag.
• Help us with the module wishlist! We hope to connect every database backend to dat, but we can't do it without your help!

You can install the latest development version with git:

git clone git://github.com/maxogden/dat.git
cd dat
npm install
npm link

Get Involved

• Follow @dat_project on Twitter
• Have any other questions/concerns? Open an issue
• Suggest an organization that should be using dat to distribute their data—we will help!