Amahi Anywhere Client API Specification - v0.13

The Amahi Anywhere Clients use a REST HTTP protocol for browsing, downloading and streaming files and more.

The clients can be in local mode (known as "LAN" or "LAN Access" to the user), or remote mode (known as "Remote"). Internally we just call them local or remote. The client can perform streaming and the rest of the functions much faster when using the local mode, being inside the user's LAN, so that should be the favored mode, when available. The client should test for local mode availability dynamically, but only when the user is interacting with the app, never in the background, as this will be costly in terms of battery.

API Endpoints

Through this document we will have the following API endpoints. The interaction with the endpoint calls is always REST-based and in JSON, unless otherwise specified.

The Auth API endpoint: api.example.com with SSL, verified certs and port 443
The PFE API endpoint (or proxy-front-end) endpoint: pfe.example.com with SSL, verified certs and port 443
The Relay API endpoint is determined by the mode of operation of the client and the info in the PUT /client call to the PFE:

in remote mode, it's the relay_addr parameter, always using SSL, with verified certs
in local mode, it's the local_addr parameter, using plain HTTP, without SSL

Example of a typical sequence of accesses:

Authenticate the amahi user against the Amahi API endpoint
GET /servers (this gives a session token to use for each server)
POST /auth expects JSON type data with pin key in request body and returns auth token for that hda user
GET /shares will return the visible shares on a given server (with the session for that server)
GET /files?s=SomeShare&p=/som/path/or/file.png to get a directory or a file from a server (with the proper session key)

The user navigates through their files by repeating calls like 5 above with different share names and paths.

Authentication

The app must collect 1) a username/email and 2) a password, from the user and authenticate this information against Amahi's servers using the OAuth 2 protocol with the Amahi API endpoint.

In order for this to work, the app must request a pair of (string) settings from the Amahi team: 1) the App ID and 2) the App Secret. There will be two such pairs of settings, one pair for development/testing and one pair for production/release.

The OAuth API endpoint base path for production is /api2.

We use the simplified version of OAuth without web redirection.

To login, the client app has to first issue a POST to /api2/oauth/token with a body containing the following in it (with the items in capital letters appropriately setup):

grant_type=password
client_id=APP_ID
client_secret=SECRET
password=PASSWORD
username=USERNAME

This POST operation will return a JSON structure in the following form:

{
    "access_token": "d78abb0542736865f94704521609c230dac03a2f369d043ac212d6933b91410e",
    "scope": "public",
    "token_type": "bearer"
}

Subsequent calls to the main auth server will have to have the acces_token returned by the OAuth call, like this:

GET /api2/servers?access_token=d78abb0542736865f94704521609c230dac03a2f369d043ac212d6933b91410e

Initial request for Amahi servers

After authenticating in the user, the client should log the user in. Then it needs to request the Amahi API back-end what servers the user has, also using the Amahi API endpoint. The format of the call is:

GET /servers
The API back-end returns an array of servers that the user has installed
The server has a name, which is what is shown to the user
The servers may be active (1) or not (0). If active, the user can select it and proceed to browse it. If not, the user must not be given the chance to select it (it should be "greyed out" or some such indication)
Each server returns a session token. This is an ephimeral session value and it's required for every subsequent call to the rest of the APIs in the Session header. It may be invalidated after some time without accessing it
Each server also has an ip_address, which is either an IP proper or black if the server is not running yet
Each server has a fqdn, which is a FQDN with the Dynamic DNS name of the server

Example:

  [
  	{
  		"name": "server1",
  		"active": 1,
  		"session": "6337fc16d9b31049e3137bb8fc74b86e6b4cb35c",
  		"ip_addr": "1.2.3.4",
  		"fqdn": "server1.yourhda.com"
  	},
  	{
  		"name": "server2",
  		"active": 0,
  		"session": "",
  		"ip_addr": "",
  		"fqdn": ""
  	}
  ]

Identifying the client to API endpoints

For all calls, the client must include a User-Agent header with its details so that we can support version-specific work-arounds. Here's what's typical for a user agent:

User-Agent: AmahiAnywhere/<version> (<platform>)

where version is the version of the client and platform contains details of the platform the client is running on.

Examples:

User-Agent: AmahiAnywhere/1.3 (iPad; iOS 7.0.4; Scale/2.00)
User-Agent: AmahiAnywhere/1.0 (Android 4.2.2)

Failure to send this header will result in a 400 Bad Request error. We plan to enforce these

Resources on a server

Timestamps

We have adopted the format of the various time fields (e.g. the mtime element) to be like RFC1123 but hard-coding GMT as the time zone. For example: Tue, 07 May 2013 05:28:09 GMT, Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT.

If apps ever display the timestamp, they should use either relative terms ("4 months ago", "5 minutes ago", "about a year ago") or compensate for the client's current time zone, relative to GMT: someone in GMT+1 should see the same time in the element, plus one hour (using time arithmetic).

Initial Client Connection

When the client connects to the PFE, the client issues a PUT /client request. The proxy will return info about how to connect to a given server (HDA).

The client will have two operating modes (prefrably automaticly detected), local mode (when in the local LAN to the HDA) and remote mode (when not in the local LAN to the HDA and all access is done via the proxy). Any subsequent requests must be done to either of these two endpoints. Their addresses are obtained by this initial client call to the PFE.

PUT /client
Proxy returns the Amahi Anywhere client version, local address/port and the proxy address/port the HDA is connected to.
The local and proxy addresses are an url, including a colon and a port number
Access to the local server is done via plain HTTP, regarless of the port
Access to the relay server must always be via a secure TLS/HTTPS connection, regarless of the port. Checking the certificate is required

Example:

    {"version": "1.0", "local_addr": "http://192.168.1.10:4653", "relay_addr": "https://123.456.78.900:443"}

From this point on, the calls below can be done to the local_addr or the relay_addr.

If the client is in local mode, the API endpoint is the address given by local_addr. This should be the preferred mode if it's available.

If the client is in remote mode, the API endpoint is the address given by relay_addr.

HDA User Authentication

Since different users can have different access permissions on HDA so each user must identify himself/herself to the HDA. In order to do that the app must request a PIN from the user. This PIN can be sent to the HDA either directly or via Proxy.

To authenticate, the client app has to issue a POST to /auth with an application/json content-type body containing the following in it:

POST /auth
```
  {
    "pin": "1234"
  }
```
- The PIN must be 3 to 5 characters and must match [A-Za-z0-9]+.
On successful authentication, a 200 OK response will be sent by the server.
```
  {
    "auth_token": "51e3088a2da8f1c8b9285f0fae25b95c"
  }
```
- This auth_token must be sent in Authorization header for /shares, /files and /logout requests.
On unsuccessful authentication, server will respond with 401 Unauthorized.

HDA User Logout

POST /logout
Logs out the user whose auth_token has been provided and removes its session
It will return a 200 OK response on successful logout

Headers

Authorization the auth_token must be sent here.

Shares

GET /shares
Lists all the shares on the HDA that are available to the logged-in user
The return type is a json array with a list of shares, sorted alphabetically (without capitalization), with their name as a string in the name element, their modification time in the mtime element and tags.
The tags field is a json list of tags associated to a share. The user can put arbitrary information in these fields.
The writable field denotes if that share is writable or not for the logged-in user. Client app must appropriately display/hide the Upload or Delete button as per the value of writable field for a given share.

Example:

[
    { "name": "Books", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "tags": [ "books" ], "writable": false },
    { "name": "Docs", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "tags": [ ], "writable": true },
    { "name": "Movies", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "tags": [ "movies" ], "writable": false },
    { "name": "Pictures", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "tags": [ "pictures" ], "writable": false },
    { "name": "Torrents", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "tags": [ "movies", "tv" ], "writable": false }
    { "name": "TV", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "tags": [ "tv" ], "writable": true }
]

Reading Files

GET /files?s=:sharename&p=:path
Retrieves the file or the directory in the given share :sharename in the s parameter, with the given path :path in the p parameter
If the requested file is a directory, this call returns its contents as an array of entries.
The name element represents the name of the file or directory
The mime_type element represents the expected MIME type of the file based on the extension (the actual file could have some other data inside it)
The mtime element is the modification time of the entry
The size element contains the size of the file at the time of retrieval of the directory in bytes. It is a very large unsigned integer (uint64)
The cache element contains the details about the thumbnail cache for any image file. It is a json object with the following fields:
- The status element is a boolean field. If false, no other field in cache is present, and if true the remaining fields represents the details about the thumbnail.
- The mtime element is the modification time of the entry
- The size element contains the size of the file
- The endpoint element contains endpoint for the thumbnail cache. It is essentially of the form: /cache?s=<sharename>&p=<file-path>
If the entry the case of a directory entry, the mime_type is set to text/directory, the size is 0, and status for cache is false

Example for a directory entry:

[
    { "name": "dir", "mime_type": "text/directory", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 0, "cache": {"status": false} },
    { "name": "README.txt", "mime_type": "text/plain", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 12345, "cache": {"status": false} },
    { "name": "music.mp3", "mime_type": "audio/mpeg", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 23456, "cache": {"status": false} },
    { "name": "image.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 34567, , "cache": {"status": true, "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 4567, "endpoint": "/cache?s=<sharename>&p=<file-path>"} },
    { "name": "image.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 28517360, "cache": {"status": true, "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 9360, "endpoint": "/cache?s=<sharename>&p=<file-path>"} },
    { "name": "movie.mkv", "mime_type": "video/webm", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 45678, "cache": {"status": false} },
    { "name": "movie.mp4", "mime_type": "video/mp4", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 12345, "cache": {"status": false} },
    { "name": "large.iso", "mime_type": "application/octet-stream", "mtime": "Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:38:32 GMT", "size": 32839273198, "cache": {"status": false} }
]

If the path requested is to an actual file, the file is returned via the HTTP response, with the server's best attempt at detecting the file contents procvided in the Content-type header
Caching is honored for both files and directories, using the Etag and If-None-Match headers. See Caching below
Ranges and partial file requests are also honored (see Streaming Support below)
DELETE /files?s=:sharename&p=:path
Deletes the file or the directory in the given share :sharename in the s parameter, with the given path :path in the p parameter
It returns a 200 code if it succeeded, else there is an error

Headers

Authorization the auth_token must be sent here.

Parameters

s is the name of the share where the file is located
It must be URL-encoded and the share must exist
p is the path to a file or directory, relative from the root directory
It must be URL-encoded.
The path must start with %2f (the URL encoding for /).
If no path is given, the file system root directory is returned.

Errors

If the Authorization header is not supplied or is wrong, a 403 Forbidden is returned.
If the share does not exist, a 400 Bad Request is returned.
If the path cannot be found, a 404 Not Found HTTP error is returned.
If the path is to a directory, a json representation of all the files and directories therein is returned.
If the path has invalid characters or is not properly escaped, a 400 Bad Request is returned.
Finally, if error occurs in the remote end, a 502 Bad Gateway error is returned.

Uploading Files

POST /files?s=:sharename&p=:path
Upload the file in the given share :sharename in the s parameter, with the given path :path in the p parameter
Post the data as multipart/form-data encoded with file as file field.
Following status codes can be expected:
- 200: if the file is uploaded successfully
- 412: if the posted data is not correctly encoded
- 415: if the file name is invalid
- 417: if file field in form is emtpy

Deleting Files

DELETE /files?s=:sharename&p=:path
Deletes the file or the directory in the given share :sharename in the s parameter, with the given path :path in the p parameter
It returns a 200 code if it succeeded, else there is an error

Headers

Authorization the auth_token must be sent here.

Parameters

Same parameter as in reading a file, a share and a path to the file.

Errors

Same errors as in reading files, and in addition:

If deletion of the file or folder fails, 417 Expectation Failed is returned.

Getting Thumbnails

GET /cache?s=:sharename&p=:path

Retrieves the thumbnail for a file in the given share :sharename in the s parameter, with the given path :path in the p parameter
As mentioned in Reading Files, endpoint for thumbnail is returned by server if it is present.
It returns status code 200 and the file content if thumbnail is found else, code 404 returned.

Identifying Content

The client will identify the content of the documents being retrieved based on the following:

For actual files, the Content-Type header
For directories, each file has a mime_type value for it

Streaming Support

It's critical to be able to support streaming so that large files can be played over the network easily.

The server supports the range header for partial retrieval of content.

Other possibilities not supported yet:

Chunked transfer encoding header

Autodetection of Local vs. Remote

Autodetection is done by simply doing a /shares call to the local_addr endpoint and verifying that the result is both 200 OK and that the data is a proper JSON array.

For technical reasons, DNS cannot be use for this type of autodetection.

Caching

The server supports the ETag scheme for caching.

The client ought to make use of the HTTP freshness headers whenever possible, to lower the load on the back-end servers (and increase the speed of the application).

All requests for directories and files should include an ETag or Last-Modified header. When the client first requests a resource, it should store this value for future use. On subsequent requests, the client submits requests with If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since headers based on the stored information. If the resource hasn't changed, the client will see a 304 Not Modified response, which saves time, CPU and bandwidth most of the time.

Redirection

The client will probably have to support for redirection in the future, as a possible result of some calls. This is to provide a more efficient operation. It's not required at this time.

Error Handling

If the server cannot contact the origin server, it will issue a 408 Request Timeout. This can be taken as an indication that the origin HDA is not connected or reachable.

If the server is having trouble, you might see a 5xx error from calls. 500 means that the app is down. It's the client's responsibility in all cases of 5xx errors to handle it properly towards the user and allow her to retry the requests later.

License

This spec of the Amahi Anywhere protocol is open source, released under the GPL v3 license.

This means that this protocol is open, as invented by Amahi in 2013 and subsequent modifications.

This section explicitly states all that you may do with the protocol.

The specifications are fully open to the public to be used for any purpose (the Amahi project reserves the right to set the Amahi Anywhere specification and certify compliance). They are free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means that commercial developers may independently write Amahi Anywhere software which is compatible with the specifications for no charge and without restrictions of any kind. There are no licensing fees or royalties of any kind for use of the protocol or its specifications, or for distributing, selling, or applications using the Amahi Anywhere formats/protocols.

The Amahi project also makes available software that implements the formats, which is distributed according to Open Source licenses as described in their sources.

The Amahi Anywhere protocol/formats nor any of the implemented formatting methods are covered by any known patent.

Amahi Anywhere is one of a family of protocols and software of the Amahi project, all created according to the same free ideals.

If you would like to redistribute parts or all of Amahi Anywhere under different terms, contact the Amahi support line.

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Amahi Anywhere Client API Specification - v0.13

API Endpoints

Authentication

Initial request for Amahi servers

Identifying the client to API endpoints

Resources on a server

Timestamps

Initial Client Connection

HDA User Authentication

HDA User Logout

Headers

Shares

Reading Files

Headers

Parameters

Errors

Uploading Files

Deleting Files

Headers

Parameters

Errors

Getting Thumbnails

Identifying Content

Streaming Support

Autodetection of Local vs. Remote

Caching

Redirection

Error Handling

License

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Repository files navigation

Amahi Anywhere Client API Specification - v0.13

API Endpoints

Authentication

Initial request for Amahi servers

Identifying the client to API endpoints

Resources on a server

Timestamps

Initial Client Connection

HDA User Authentication

HDA User Logout

Headers

Shares

Reading Files

Headers

Parameters

Errors

Uploading Files

Deleting Files

Headers

Parameters

Errors

Getting Thumbnails

Identifying Content

Streaming Support

Autodetection of Local vs. Remote

Caching

Redirection

Error Handling

License

About

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