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Pinning files

Legacy: This page documents Filebase's IPFS tier. For new deployments, use the S3-compatible object storage tier with the s3.filebase.io endpoint.

There are three ways to pin content to IPFS via Filebase:

  1. Upload a file to an IPFS bucket via the Filebase Console.
  2. Upload a file via the legacy S3 API at s3.filebase.com.
  3. Re-pin an existing CID via the Pinning Service API.

Console upload

  1. Open the Console and click Buckets.
  2. Click into your IPFS bucket.
  3. Upload → File (or Folder).
  4. Pick the file or folder and upload.
  5. Once uploaded, the object's CID appears in the row's metadata.

S3 API upload

The IPFS endpoint is s3.filebase.com (region us-east-1):

aws --endpoint https://s3.filebase.com s3 cp ./photo.jpg s3://my-ipfs-bucket/

The CID is returned in the response headers as x-amz-meta-cid. Run with --debug to see the full headers, or fetch via s3api head-object after the upload.

Pinning a folder

Folders pin as CAR files — Content Addressable aRchives. Use the ipfs-car CLI to package a folder into a CAR, then upload with the import=car metadata flag:

npx ipfs-car --pack ./my-folder --output folder.car

aws --endpoint https://s3.filebase.com s3 cp folder.car s3://my-ipfs-bucket/ \
--metadata 'import=car'

The response includes the folder's root CID.

Re-pin an existing CID

If the content already exists somewhere on IPFS and you just need Filebase to keep it pinned:

curl -X POST https://api.filebase.io/v1/ipfs/pins \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "cid": "<CID>", "name": "my-pin" }'

See the Pinning Service API for the full reference.

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