Gun.js why do I get the error "You have no persistence layer to save to error"

I'm trying out gun.js I have it installed as a node.js project, I have configured the amazon S3 bucket through the dotenv and I have tried adding a data.json file and still I cant get gun.js to save the file locally or to he S3 bucket.

I know its early days for gun, but I get the feeling I'm missing something obvious.

I'm expecting to find a .json file in he local file system and or in the S3 bucket but I get neither.

require('dotenv').config();
var Gun = require('gun');
var gun = Gun({
    file: 'data.json', // local testing and development
    s3: {        
     key: process.env.AWS_KEY, // AWS Access Key
     secret: process.env.AWS_SECRET, // AWS Secret Token
     bucket: process.env.AWS_BUCKET // The bucket you want to save into
    }
});

gun.put({ hello: 'world' }).key('my/first/data');

Solution

@bill Just noticed this now, sorry for the late answer. Thanks to @paul-w for notifying me of this and his response earlier today.

This question and answer assumes you are running a version EARLIER than v0.4.x!

If you are in NodeJS and are getting the error “You have no persistence layer to save to”, it means the default storage drivers (S3, file.js) didn't get installed or were deactivated - which is unusual as this happens automatically.

Try installing gun (again?) via npm install gun in your local NodeJS project directory, not a git clone or a copy&paste.

I can only guess, given the context you explain, that you might have copied/moved gun (like the gun.js file) into your project. The browser will work with just the single file, but NodeJS needs more - it needs the S3/file.js modules, which will be included if installed with npm or properly git cloned.

Also unlikely (since your code doesn't show this), if you happen to (this is bad) Gun({wire: {put: null, get: null}}) (or something similar) it would intentionally break the persistence drivers.

If you are in the browser and getting the error (and assuming your not overwriting the persistence drivers like in the previous paragraph), it could be because of some weird situation like you are using an old version of IE or a browser that doesn't have JSON support. Again, all these things are unlikely but I'm just wanting to be comprehensive.

Note: The above applies to the question in your title. However your actual question doesn't ask about the error, it asks about not seeing data in data.json or in S3. Answering that below.

To which @paul-w is more on track. If you are using S3 then the file.js module (data.json) automatically deactivates itself. If you are using the file.js module (data.json) then S3 does not get activated. As @paul-w mentioned, v0.4.x will support easily having multiple storage engines simultaneously. However, you should see your data in at least one or the other - unless you are getting the "no persistence layer" error, in which case you won't see your data anywhere because there isn't any persistence! But again, default persistence layers are included with gun by default (unless installation was incorrect, or you explicitly overwrite them - both unusual things).

I hope this answers your question. Sorry I didn't see it till now. Please let me know if this works, and also join the conversation at https://gitter.im/amark/gun . Thank you for helping start the stackoverflow questions! We need more of these!