[](https://crates.io/crates/rqbit)
[](https://crates.io/crates/librqbit)
[](https://docs.rs/librqbit/latest/librqbit/)
# rqbit - bittorrent client in Rust
**rqbit** is a bittorrent client written in Rust. Has HTTP API and Web UI, and can be used as a library.
Also has a desktop app built with [Tauri](https://tauri.app/) (on Windows and OSX).
## Usage quick start
### Optional - start the server
Assuming you are downloading to ~/Downloads.
rqbit server start ~/Downloads
### Download torrents
Assuming you are downloading to ~/Downloads. If the server is already started, ```-o ~/Downloads``` can be omitted.
rqbit download -o ~/Downloads 'magnet:?....' [https?://url/to/.torrent] [/path/to/local/file.torrent]
## Web UI
Access with http://localhost:3030/web/. It looks similar to Desktop app, see screenshot below.
## Desktop app
The desktop app is a [thin wrapper](https://github.com/ikatson/rqbit/blob/main/desktop/src-tauri/src/main.rs) on top of the Web UI frontend.
Download it in [Releases](https://github.com/ikatson/rqbit/releases).
<img width="1136" alt="Rqbit desktop" src="https://github.com/ikatson/rqbit/assets/221386/51f56542-667f-4f5e-a1e0-942b1df4cd5a">
## Performance
Anecdotally from a few reports, rqbit is faster than other clients they've tried, at least with their default settings.
Memory usage for the server is usually within a few tens of megabytes, which makes it great for e.g. RaspberryPI.
CPU is spent mostly on SHA1 checksumming.
## Installation
There are pre-built binaries in [Releases](https://github.com/ikatson/rqbit/releases).
If someone wants to put rqbit into e.g. homebrew, PRs welcome :)
[](https://repology.org/project/rqbit/versions)
If you have rust toolchain installed, this should work:
```
cargo install rqbit
```
## Build
Just a regular Rust binary build process.
cargo build --release
## Useful options
### -v <log-level>
Increase verbosity. Possible values: trace, debug, info, warn, error.
### --list
Will print the contents of the torrent file or the magnet link.
### --overwrite
If you want to resume downloading a file that already exists, you'll need to add this option.
### --peer-connect-timeout=10s
This will increase the default peer connect timeout. The default one is 2 seconds, and it's sometimes not enough.
### -r / --filename-re
Use a regex here to select files by their names.
## Features and missing features
### Some supported features
- Sequential downloading (the default and only option)
- Resume downloading file(s) if they already exist on disk
- Selective downloading using a regular expression for filename
- DHT support. Allows magnet links to work, and makes more peers available.
- HTTP API
- Pausing / unpausing / deleting (with files or not) APIs
- Stateful server
- Web UI
### Bugs, missing features and other caveats
PRs are very welcome.
- Only supports BitTorrent V1 over TCP
- As this was created for personal needs, and for educational purposes, documentation, commit message quality etc. leave a lot to be desired.
## HTTP API
By default it listens on http://127.0.0.1:3030.
curl -s 'http://127.0.0.1:3030/'
{
"apis": {
"GET /": "list all available APIs",
"GET /dht/stats": "DHT stats",
"GET /dht/table": "DHT routing table",
"GET /torrents": "List torrents (default torrent is 0)",
"GET /torrents/{index}": "Torrent details",
"GET /torrents/{index}/haves": "The bitfield of have pieces",
"GET /torrents/{index}/peer_stats": "Per peer stats",
"GET /torrents/{index}/stats/v1": "Torrent stats",
"GET /web/": "Web UI",
"POST /rust_log": "Set RUST_LOG to this post launch (for debugging)",
"POST /torrents": "Add a torrent here. magnet: or http:// or a local file.",
"POST /torrents/{index}/delete": "Forget about the torrent, remove the files",
"POST /torrents/{index}/forget": "Forget about the torrent, keep the files",
"POST /torrents/{index}/pause": "Pause torrent",
"POST /torrents/{index}/start": "Resume torrent"
},
"server": "rqbit"
}
### Add torrent through HTTP API
```curl -d 'magnet:?...' http://127.0.0.1:3030/torrents```
OR
```curl -d 'http://.../file.torrent' http://127.0.0.1:3030/torrents```
OR
```curl --data-binary @/tmp/xubuntu-23.04-minimal-amd64.iso.torrent http://127.0.0.1:3030/torrents```
Supported query parameters, all optional:
- output_folder - the folder to download to. If not specified, defaults to the one that rqbit server started with
- list_only=true|false - if you want to just list the files in the torrent instead of downloading
## Code organization
- crates/rqbit - main binary
- crates/librqbit - main library
- crates/librqbit-core - torrent utils
- crates/bencode - bencode serializing/deserializing
- crates/buffers - wrappers around binary buffers
- crates/clone_to_owned - a trait to make something owned
- crates/sha1w - wrappers around sha1 libraries
- crates/peer_binary_protocol - the protocol to talk to peers
- crates/dht - Distributed Hash Table implementation
- desktop - desktop app built with [Tauri](https://tauri.app/)
## Motivation
First of all, I love Rust. The project was created purely for the fun of the process of writing code in Rust.
I was not satisfied with my regular bittorrent client, and was wondering how much work would it be to create a new one from scratch, and it got where it is, starting from bencode protocol implemenation, then peer protocol, etc, etc.