Expand description
HTTP Tracker.
This module contains the HTTP tracker implementation.
The HTTP tracker is a simple HTTP server that responds to two GET
requests:
Announce
: used to announce the presence of a peer to the tracker.Scrape
: used to get information about a torrent.
Refer to the bit_torrent
module for more
information about the BitTorrent
protocol.
§Table of Contents
§Requests
§Announce
Announce
requests are used to announce the presence of a peer to the
tracker. The tracker responds with a list of peers that are also downloading
the same torrent. A “swarm” is a group of peers that are downloading the
same torrent.
Announce
responses are encoded in bencoded
format.
There are two types of Announce
responses: compact
and non-compact
. In
a compact response, the peers are encoded in a single string. In a
non-compact response, the peers are encoded in a list of dictionaries. The
compact response is more efficient than the non-compact response and it does
not contain the peer’s IDs.
Query parameters
NOTICE: you can click on the parameter name to see a full description after extracting and parsing the parameter from the URL query component.
Parameter | Type | Description | Required | Default | Example |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
info_hash | percent encoded of 20-byte array | The Info Hash of the torrent. | Yes | No | %81%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00 |
peer_addr | string | The IP address of the peer. | No | No | 2.137.87.41 |
downloaded | positive integer | The number of bytes downloaded by the peer. | No | 0 | 0 |
uploaded | positive integer | The number of bytes uploaded by the peer. | No | 0 | 0 |
peer_id | percent encoded of 20-byte array | The ID of the peer. | Yes | No | -qB00000000000000001 |
port | positive integer | The port used by the peer. | Yes | No | 17548 |
left | positive integer | The number of bytes pending to download. | No | 0 | 0 |
event | positive integer | The event that triggered the Announce request: started , completed , stopped | No | None | completed |
compact | 0 or 1 | Whether the tracker should return a compact peer list. | No | None | 0 |
numwant | positive integer | Not implemented. The maximum number of peers you want in the reply. | No | 50 | 50 |
Refer to the Announce
request for more information about the parameters.
NOTICE: the BEP 03 defines only the
ip
andevent
parameters as optional. However, the tracker assigns default values to the optional parameters if they are not provided.
NOTICE: the
peer_addr
parameter is not part of the original specification. But the peer IP was added in the UDP Tracker protocol. It is used to provide the peer’s IP address to the tracker, but it is ignored by the tracker. The tracker uses the IP address of the peer that sent the request or the right-most-ip in theX-Forwarded-For
header if the tracker is behind a reverse proxy.
NOTICE: the maximum number of peers that the tracker can return is
74
. Defined with a hardcoded constTORRENT_PEERS_LIMIT
. Refer to issue 262 for more information about this limitation.
NOTICE: the
info_hash
parameter is NOT aURL
encoded string param. It is percent encode of the rawinfo_hash
bytes (40 bytes). URLGET
params can contain any bytes, not only well-formed UTF-8. Theinfo_hash
is a 20-byte SHA1. Check thepercent_encoding
module to know more about the encoding.
NOTICE: the
peer_id
parameter is NOT aURL
encoded string param. It is percent encode of the raw peer ID bytes (20 bytes). URLGET
params can contain any bytes, not only well-formed UTF-8. Theinfo_hash
is a 20-byte SHA1. Check thepercent_encoding
module to know more about the encoding.
NOTICE: by default, the tracker returns the non-compact peer list when no
compact
parameter is provided or is empty. The BEP 23 suggests to do the opposite. The tracker should return the compact peer list by default and return the non-compact peer list if thecompact
parameter is0
.
Sample announce URL
A sample GET
announce
request:
Sample non-compact response
In bencoded format:
d8:completei333e10:incompletei444e8:intervali111e12:min intervali222e5:peersld2:ip15:105.105.105.1057:peer id20:-qB000000000000000014:porti28784eed2:ip39:6969:6969:6969:6969:6969:6969:6969:69697:peer id20:-qB000000000000000024:porti28784eeee
And represented as a json:
{
"complete": 333,
"incomplete": 444,
"interval": 111,
"min interval": 222,
"peers": [
{
"ip": "105.105.105.105",
"peer id": "-qB00000000000000001",
"port": 28784
},
{
"ip": "6969:6969:6969:6969:6969:6969:6969:6969",
"peer id": "-qB00000000000000002",
"port": 28784
}
]
}
If you save the response as a file and you open it with a program that can handle binary data you would see:
00000000: 6438 3a63 6f6d 706c 6574 6569 3333 3365 d8:completei333e
00000010: 3130 3a69 6e63 6f6d 706c 6574 6569 3434 10:incompletei44
00000020: 3465 383a 696e 7465 7276 616c 6931 3131 4e8:intervali111
00000030: 6531 323a 6d69 6e20 696e 7465 7276 616c e12:min interval
00000040: 6932 3232 6535 3a70 6565 7273 6c64 323a i222e5:peersld2:
00000050: 6970 3135 3a31 3035 2e31 3035 2e31 3035 ip15:105.105.105
00000060: 2e31 3035 373a 7065 6572 2069 6432 303a .1057:peer id20:
00000070: 2d71 4230 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 -qB0000000000000
00000080: 3030 3031 343a 706f 7274 6932 3837 3834 00014:porti28784
00000090: 6565 6432 3a69 7033 393a 3639 3639 3a36 eed2:ip39:6969:6
000000a0: 3936 393a 3639 3639 3a36 3936 393a 3639 969:6969:6969:69
000000b0: 3639 3a36 3936 393a 3639 3639 3a36 3936 69:6969:6969:696
000000c0: 3937 3a70 6565 7220 6964 3230 3a2d 7142 97:peer id20:-qB
000000d0: 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 0000000000000000
000000e0: 3234 3a70 6f72 7469 3238 3738 3465 6565 24:porti28784eee
000000f0: 65 e
Refer to the Normal
, i.e. Non-Compact
response for more information about the response.
Sample compact response
In bencoded format:
d8:completei333e10:incompletei444e8:intervali111e12:min intervali222e5:peers6:iiiipp6:peers618:iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiippe
And represented as a json:
{
"complete": 333,
"incomplete": 444,
"interval": 111,
"min interval": 222,
"peers": "iiiipp",
"peers6": "iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipp"
}
If you save the response as a file and you open it with a program that can handle binary data you would see:
0000000: 6438 3a63 6f6d 706c 6574 6569 3333 3365 d8:completei333e
0000010: 3130 3a69 6e63 6f6d 706c 6574 6569 3434 10:incompletei44
0000020: 3465 383a 696e 7465 7276 616c 6931 3131 4e8:intervali111
0000030: 6531 323a 6d69 6e20 696e 7465 7276 616c e12:min interval
0000040: 6932 3232 6535 3a70 6565 7273 363a 6969 i222e5:peers6:ii
0000050: 6969 7070 363a 7065 6572 7336 3138 3a69 iipp6:peers618:i
0000060: 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 6970 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiip
0000070: 7065 pe
Refer to the Compact
response for more information about the response.
Protocol
Original specification in BEP 03. The BitTorrent
Protocol Specification.
If you want to know more about the announce
request:
- BEP 03. The
BitTorrent
Protocol Specification - BEP 23. Tracker Returns Compact Peer Lists
- Vuze announce docs
- wiki.theory.org - Announce
§Scrape
The scrape
request allows a peer to get swarm metadata
for multiple torrents at the same time.
The response contains the swarm metadata for that torrent:
Query parameters
Parameter | Type | Description | Required | Default | Example |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
info_hash | percent encoded of 20-byte array | The Info Hash of the torrent. | Yes | No | %81%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00 |
NOTICE: you can scrape multiple torrents at the same time by passing multiple
info_hash
parameters.
Refer to the Scrape
request for more information about the parameters.
Sample scrape URL
A sample scrape
request for only one torrent:
http://0.0.0.0:7070/scrape?info_hash=%81%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00
In order to scrape multiple torrents at the same time you can pass multiple
info_hash
parameters: info_hash=%81%00%0...00%00%00&info_hash=%82%00%0...00%00%00
NOTICE: the maximum number of torrents you can scrape at the same time is
74
. Defined with a hardcoded constMAX_SCRAPE_TORRENTS
.
Sample response
The scrape
response is a bencoded
byte array like the following:
d5:filesd20:iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid8:completei1e10:downloadedi2e10:incompletei3eeee
And represented as a json:
{
"files": {
"iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii": {
"complete": 1,
"downloaded": 2,
"incomplete": 3
}
}
}
Where the files
key contains a dictionary of dictionaries. The first
dictionary key is the info_hash
of the torrent (iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
in
the example). The second level dictionary contains the
swarm metadata for that torrent.
If you save the response as a file and you open it with a program that can handle binary data you would see:
00000000: 6435 3a66 696c 6573 6432 303a 6969 6969 d5:filesd20:iiii
00000010: 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 6969 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
00000020: 6438 3a63 6f6d 706c 6574 6569 3165 3130 d8:completei1e10
00000030: 3a64 6f77 6e6c 6f61 6465 6469 3265 3130 :downloadedi2e10
00000040: 3a69 6e63 6f6d 706c 6574 6569 3365 6565 :incompletei3eee
00000050: 65 e
Protocol
If you want to know more about the scrape
request:
§Versioning
Right not there is only version v1
. The HTTP tracker implements BEPS:
- BEP 03. The
BitTorrent
Protocol Specification - BEP 07. IPv6 Tracker Extension
- BEP 23. Tracker Returns Compact Peer Lists
- BEP 48. Tracker Protocol Extension: Scrape
In the future there could be a v2
that implements new BEPS with breaking
changes.
§Links
Modules§
- percent_
encoding - This module contains functions for percent decoding infohashes and peer IDs.
- server
- Module to handle the HTTP server instances.
- v1
- HTTP server implementation for the
v1
API.
Enums§
- Version
- The version of the HTTP tracker.