Writing a server
Serve the handshake and the library; add save backups, cheats or pairing when you want, and declare them in its features. A server fits in a weekend.
GET /.well-known/lantern
GET /api/lantern/v1/apps?sort=addedThe text may still change before 1.0. Comments are welcome, from client and server authors especially.
What stays
What it keeps from today's protocols
The protocols in use today (Tinfoil's index, Ownfoil, AeroFoil) got a good deal right. Lantern keeps it, so a server can speak both.
- Discovery on the local network, with Ownfoil's datagram, which three clients already speak.
- Opaque download links: a file's name carries no meaning.
- Range requests, so a download picks up where it stopped.
- Filtering on the server: the console says what it has, the server answers with what it is missing.
What is new
What it adds
What clients have had to guess until now, written down.
- A SHA-256 for every file, checked before anything is installed.
- A version in the path and a schema in every document: a client and a server of different ages keep working together.
- A declared list of features instead of guessed ones.
- Cursor pages that neither skip nor repeat while the library changes.
- Pairing a console with a token you can revoke, rather than a password kept on it.
- Errors with real status codes, all in one format.
- Nothing hidden: no hardware identifier, no proprietary encryption, no change to the client decided by the server.
Implement it
For server and client authors
The specification is short: few routes, fixed shapes, plain HTTP and JSON.
Writing a client
Find servers on the local network, read their features, page through the library and check each download's SHA-256. A client fits in a few hundred lines of C++.
User-Agent: ExampleClient/0.1
Range: bytes=0-1048575Schemas and examples
A JSON Schema for every document, an example of each, and an OpenAPI description of the routes, to check your own against.
In the repository: a conformance suite to run against a server (conformance/), and a small reference server that passes it (server/). Only an implementation that passes the suite should call itself Lantern-compatible.
The first client will be PlayShelf, a homebrew package manager for the Nintendo Switch. PlayShelf
For your own games
Lantern carries what your server holds, between it and your console. It finds nothing and distributes nothing: it is not a way to get games, and its servers are for the games you own.
Licences
Free to implement
- CC BY 4.0The specification's text: share and adapt it, naming where it comes from.
- MITEverything else (schemas, OpenAPI description, examples, conformance suite, reference server), so that any server or client, under any licence, can implement the protocol and copy its schemas as they are.
Questions, comments and proposals go to the repository's issues.
This site
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Read it, then tell us
The draft is the time to change things. An issue about a route, a field or a missing case helps every server and client to come.