Canonical web resource of versions

[Hanse00]

This is part question part idea, as I don't know if it's already easily attainable somewhere.

As someone who runs a server using a Docker container I've created myself, I'd love a way to automate the process of building a new container, when a new version of the game is out.

My best idea currently is scraping the HTML of https://factorio.com/download-headless, but it would be ideal if there was some endpoint that would expose the list of versions, in a machine readable format, eg. JSON, XML, whatever.

Ideally the data should look something like (Loosely using python data structures as pseudo-code):

Code: Select all

{
  [
    tag: "latest",
    version: "0.18.24",
  ],
  [
    tag: "stable",
    version: "0.17.79",
  ],
  [
    tag: "0.17.79",
    version: "0.17.79",
  ],
  [
    tag: "0.17.74",
    version: "0.17.74",
  ],
}

This would make it possible to tell in advance, which version the latest stable and experimental are, and which versions are available in general.

Since the game itself has a way of knowing that a new version is available, I presume some sort of infrastructure along these lines already exists?
I believe an official solution would be significantly easier than scraping the HTML, since the data is already there somewhere on the backend, and being converted into HTML. Instead of trying to convert it back again, having the original data would be great.

[Koub]

Something like this : https://updater.factorio.com/get-available-versions ?

[Jap2.0]

https://updater.factorio.com/get-available-versions will give you a list of possible update paths, and https://updater.factorio.com/get-download-link will get you a link to download something or other (you have to send that some parameters but I'm not quite sure what). See https://github.com/narc0tiq/factorio-updater, and maybe https://github.com/Bisa/factorio-init.

[Hanse00]

Something like this : https://updater.factorio.com/get-available-versions ?

Yes!

It's a great start, although I think it could do with a few modifications for these kinds of purposes.

It lists which version is currently "stable", but not explicitly which is "latest".
Secondly it lists the update paths (Which makes sense for the purpose it's made for), but it doesn't (as far as I can tell) list canonically which version are currently considered "available" (That is, the versions listed at https://factorio.com/download-headless).

[ssilk]

The latest is currently the “experimental” tab of that last link from above:
https://factorio.com/download-headless/experimental

[Koub]

@Ssilk : that's exactly what OP tries to avoid : having to parse an HTML page.

My best idea currently is scraping the HTML of https://factorio.com/download-headless, but it would be ideal if there was some endpoint that would expose the list of versions, in a machine readable format, eg. JSON, XML, whatever.

[ssilk]

It was meant as a temporary solution. html is machine readable (just need the right lib to parse it) dunno which language he’s (she?) programming, but this kind of simple list is parseable with simple regex-stacking.

It’s a BTN solution - of course.

[SyncViews]

Very much a last resort though as websites generally expect to be able to change the document structure freely, and even if they did care, hard to tell what will or won't break various parser cases.

Fully parsing HTML can be a bit of a pain since it is not valid XML, doable though, or a regex on the source text.

[Hanse00]

It was meant as a temporary solution. html is machine readable (just need the right lib to parse it) dunno which language he’s (she?) programming, but this kind of simple list is parseable with simple regex-stacking.

It’s a BTN solution - of course.

That’s definitely a possible temp solution.

As others have pointed out, I’d like to avoid it though. The page may change over time, but the actual data that’s being used to generate that page on the backend, probably won’t.

Without knowing the details of how the team handles their web-development, it’s impossible to make any clear predictions, but in general it should be a simple ask. There clearly already is a JSON file out there which tracks the upgrade paths, it just needs to also track and label which one is the “latest” version.

But I don’t know who at Wube handles that part of the business, so I don’t have anyone to ask directly.

[Bilka]

Is this what you are looking for? https://factorio.com/api/latest-releases

[Hanse00]

Is this what you are looking for? https://factorio.com/api/latest-releases

Yes!

Is there any documentation explaining what “alpha” means in this context? Is it the full game client?

[Bilka]

Is there any documentation explaining what “alpha” means in this context? Is it the full game client?

It means the same as it does on https://factorio.com/download - "Alpha is the standard full-featured build."

[Hanse00]

Is there any documentation explaining what “alpha” means in this context? Is it the full game client?

It means the same as it does on https://factorio.com/download - "Alpha is the standard full-featured build."

Awesome!

That’s exactly what I was looking for

On another note, do we have this, and other possible API endpoints (Such as the one with the upgrade paths) documented on the Wiki? I didn’t find anything, although I only searched briefly. It would be a good idea to have these documented for other users.

Are there any guidelines on rate-limiting etc? I don’t intend to hit the endpoint too often, but in general it’s another thing that would be good to share with people.

[Bilka]

On another note, do we have this, and other possible API endpoints (Such as the one with the upgrade paths) documented on the Wiki? I didn’t find anything, although I only searched briefly. It would be a good idea to have these documented for other users.

Yep, I grabbed the link from https://wiki.factorio.com/Download_API. It didn't have the get-available-versions link, so I also added that just now.

[Jap2.0]

]
Yep, I grabbed the link from https://wiki.factorio.com/Download_API. It didn't have the get-available-versions link, so I also added that just now.

That doesn't have https://updater.factorio.com/get-download-link either, but I don't know how exactly that's used (...because it's not documented there).

Actually, looking more, it might be something along the lines of

Code: Select all

https://updater.factorio.com/get-download-link?username=xxxx&token=xxxx&package=something&from=a&to=b&apiVersion=2

but I've done no testing there. (From https://github.com/narc0tiq/factorio-up ... actorio.py)

That said, are the updater.factorio.com APIs supposed to be public (as neither of them were documented and they're a different subdomain)?

[Bilka]

That said, are the updater.factorio.com APIs supposed to be public?

They are not ""public""/official. That's why all the "documentation" on them is done by community members who reverse engineered it.

(As far as I understand, there is no problem with using the API's per se. They just don't have official docs/changelogs/stability guarantees.)

[Jap2.0]

They are not ""public""/official. That's why all the "documentation" on them is done by community members who reverse engineered it.

Community members... like the wiki admin on Wube's payroll