How to write a simple Bittorrent application?

Question

How to write a simple bittorrent application. Something like a "hello world" using a bittorrent library, I mean a simplest of the application to understand the working of bittorrent. I would prefer a python or a C/C++ implementation, but it can be any language. Platform is not an issues either, but i would prefer Linux.

Recommendations for the library to follow, I have downloaded the source code for one (i think official bittorrent) from - http://sourceforge.net/projects/bittorrent/develop. But, I see a lot of other libraries at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients#Libraries. I would appreciate recommendations on this.

How to test an application if all you have is one laptop.

Answer 1

You should try libtorrent (rasterbar). http://libtorrent.org

If you want to write your client in python, on linux, install it with:

sudo apt-get install python-libtorrent

A very simple example of python code to use it to download a torrent:

import libtorrent as lt import time import sys  ses = lt.session({'listen_interfaces': '0.0.0.0:6881'})  info = lt.torrent_info(sys.argv[1]) h = ses.add_torrent({'ti': info, 'save_path': '.'}) s = h.status() print('starting', s.name)  while (not s.is_seeding):     s = h.status()      print('\r%.2f%% complete (down: %.1f kB/s up: %.1f kB/s peers: %d) %s' % (         s.progress * 100, s.download_rate / 1000, s.upload_rate / 1000,         s.num_peers, s.state), end=' ')      alerts = ses.pop_alerts()     for a in alerts:         if a.category() & lt.alert.category_t.error_notification:             print(a)      sys.stdout.flush()      time.sleep(1)  print(h.status().name, 'complete')