litecord: A Python repository from Ashthetik

Litecord is an open source, clean-room design reimplementation of Discord's HTTP API and Gateway in Python 3.

This project is a rewrite of litecord-reference and litecord serviced.

This fork aims to integrate a client into Litecord for educational purposes. Credits to Displunger.

Wait, two other Litecords?

The first version is litecord-reference, written in Python and used MongoDB as storage. It was rewritten into "litecord serviced" so that other developers could help writing it, defining a clear protocol between components (litebridge). Sadly, it didn't take off, so I (Luna), that wrote the other two, took a shot at writing it again. It works.

This is "Litecord" / "litecord". There are no rewrites planned.

Project Goals

Being able to unit test bots in an autonomous fashion.
Doing research and exploration on the Discord API.

Non-goals

Being used as a "self-hostable Discord alternative".

Caveats

Unit testing is incomplete.
Currently, there are no plans to support video in voice chats, or the Discord Store.
An unofficial Discord Client is recommended to connect (more on docs/clients.md). Litecord will not distribute official client code from Discord nor provide ways to modify the official client.

Implementation status, AKA "Does it work?"

The following "core features" are implemented to an useful degree in Litecord:

Guilds, Text Channels, Messages
Roles, Channel Overwrites, Emojis
Member Lists (from lazy guilds)

Tracking routes such as /api/science have dummy implementations.

Also consider that reimplementing the Discord API is a moving target, as Discord can implement new features at any time, for any reason. The following are not implemented, for example:

Threads
Channel Categories
API v9 (Right now, Litecord, in general, assumes v9 is just v6 to make clients work, new payload structure support is scattered throughout the codebase)

Liability

We (Litecord and contributors) are not liable for usage of this software, valid or invalid. If you intend to use this software as a "self-hostable Discord alternative", you are solely responsible for any legal action delivered by Discord if you are using their assets, intellectual property, etc.

All referenced material for implementation is based off of official Discord API documentation or third party libraries (such as Eris).

Installation

Requirements:

Python 3.9+
PostgreSQL (tested using 9.6+), SQL knowledge is recommended.
gifsicle for GIF emoji and avatar handling
poetry

Optional requirement:

mediaproxy

Download the code

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/litecord/litecord.git && cd litecord

Install packages

$ poetry install

Setting up the database

It's recommended to create a separate user for the litecord database.

# Create the PostgreSQL database.
$ createdb litecord

Copy the config.example.py file and edit it to configure your instance ( postgres credentials, etc):

$ cp config.example.py config.py
$ $EDITOR config.py

Then, you should run database migrations:

$ poetry run ./manage.py migrate

Running

Hypercorn is used to run Litecord. By default, it will bind to 0.0.0.0:5000. This will expose your Litecord instance to the world. You can use the -b option to change it (e.g. -b 0.0.0.0:45000).

$ poetry run hypercorn run:app

You can use --access-log - to output access logs to stdout.

It is recommended to run litecord behind NGINX. You can use the nginx.conf file at the root of the repository as a template.

Does it work?

You can check if your instance is running by performing an HTTP GET request on the /api/v6/gateway endpoint. For basic websocket testing, a tool such as ws can be used.

After checking that it actually works, docs/operating.md continues on common operations for a Litecord instance.

Updating

Update the code and run any new database migrations:

$ git pull
$ poetry run ./manage.py migrate

Running tests

# Install tox:
$ pip install tox

# Run lints and tests:
$ tox

Ashthetik/litecord