Edgegap offer a simple API to interact with the Relay Sessions to authorize your players to connect to the closest relay for low latency.
To interact with the API, you'll need to provide an Authorization Header Token in your requests.
You can acquire a token by registering for an account and generating a relay profile. Register here
Please note that you need a token exclusively designated for the relays. If you already have a standard API token, it will not work.
This is accessible from the sidebar on the dashboard.
Once you have the token, include it in the request headers for all API calls. Don't forget to prefix your API key with token.
If you are not familiar with working with an API, you can refer to this section to assist you in getting started.
Creating a Relay Session
To use Distributed Relay, you need to create a relay session. This is done by sending a POST request to the /v1/relays/sessions endpoint with a JSON payload. Sessions can be created manually, with a matchmaker, with a lobby, or with your own custom service.
This will dynamically select the best available relay for your players in real-time and create authorization for accessing the relay. However, we recommend pre-filtering your matchmaking to group players within the same region to avoid extreme distances between them.
This step will not directly connect your players to the relay; you will need to handle that in a later stage of the process. This step only provides you with a relay to establish a connection with.
Example Request:
POST - /v1/relays/sessions
The payload should contain an array of user objects, where each object contains the IP address of a user. You can also include a webhook_url, which is the URL that will receive notifications related to the session.
Where "users" is an array of user objects containing the "ip" of each user in the session, and "webhook_url" is an optional URL to receive session updates.
After sending the POST request, you will receive a JSON response containing the session_id, which is needed to retrieve session information later.
To retrieve session information, send a GET request to the /v1/relays/sessions/{session_id} endpoint with the session_id obtained from the POST request.
Example Request:
GET - /v1/relays/sessions/3960c873aafd-S
The response will contain information about the session, including the session status, users information, and relay information.
The expected response will contain session information like this:
Alternatively, you can use the `webhook_url` parameter when creating a relay session to be notified when the session has either succeeded in being assigned to a relay or has failed to do so.
Terminating a Relay Session
When you decide to end your connection to the relay, you can easily terminate a relay session. You need to send a DELETE request to the following endpoint:
DELETE - /v1/relays/sessions/{session_id}
Replace {session_id} with the actual session ID you want to terminate.
A response with status 204 no content means the session has been successfully deleted. The players will lose access to the relay and you will no longer be charged for that session.
It's important to terminate sessions properly in order to avoid leaving any unused resources allocated, which can impact performance and incur unnecessary costs.
C# Example
This is a C# that your Lobby or Matchmaker could do to create a Relay Session and extract the Data that you would need to return to your game client.
This example uses C# version > 7.0
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Json;
using System.Text.Json;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace LobbyNamespace
{
public class EdgegapAPI
{
private readonly HttpClient _httpClient;
public EdgegapAPI(string apiToken)
{
_httpClient = new HttpClient();
_httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Authorization", $"Token {apiToken}");
}
public async Task<RelaySessionAuthorization> CreateRelaySession(List<string> ips)
{
var jsonBody = new
{
users = ips.ConvertAll(ip => new { ip })
};
var postResponse = await _httpClient.PostAsJsonAsync("https://api.edgegap.com/v1/relays/sessions", jsonBody);
var postJsonData = await postResponse.Content.ReadFromJsonAsync<Dictionary<string, object>>();
if (!postJsonData.ContainsKey("session_id"))
{
throw new Exception("Failed to create relay session");
}
var sessionId = postJsonData["session_id"].ToString();
var retries = 5;
while (retries > 0)
{
var getResponse = await _httpClient.GetAsync($"https://api.edgegap.com/v1/relays/sessions/{sessionId}");
var getJsonData = await getResponse.Content.ReadFromJsonAsync<Dictionary<string, object>>();
var ready = (JsonElement)getJsonData["ready"];
if (ready.ValueKind == JsonValueKind.True)
{
var usersData = (JsonElement)getJsonData["session_users"];
var userAuthorizationTokens = new Dictionary<string, UInt32>();
foreach (var user in usersData.EnumerateArray())
{
var ipAddress = user.GetProperty("ip_address").GetString();
var userAuthorizationToken = user.GetProperty("authorization_token").GetUInt32();
userAuthorizationTokens[ipAddress] = userAuthorizationToken;
}
var relayData = (JsonElement)getJsonData["relay"];
var relayAddress = relayData.GetProperty("host").GetString();
var relayServerPort = relayData.GetProperty("ports").GetProperty("server").GetProperty("port").GetInt32();
var relayClientPort = relayData.GetProperty("ports").GetProperty("client").GetProperty("port").GetInt32();
return new RelaySessionAuthorization
{
SessionAuthorizationToken = sessionId,
UserAuthorizationTokens = userAuthorizationTokens,
RelayAddress = relayAddress,
RelayServerPort = relayServerPort,
RelayClientPort = relayClientPort
};
}
retries--;
await Task.Delay(2000); // wait for 2 second before retrying
}
throw new Exception("Failed to get a ready relay session");
}
}
public class RelaySessionAuthorization
{
public string? SessionAuthorizationToken { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, UInt32>? UserAuthorizationTokens { get; set; }
public string? RelayAddress { get; set; }
public int RelayServerPort { get; set; }
public int RelayClientPort { get; set; }
}
}
You will need to return this information to the corresponding Player.
The Player acting as the Server will need the RelayServerPort and all the other will need the RelayClientPort
using System.Text.Json;
using LobbyNamespace;
class Program
{
static async Task Main(string[] args)
{
// Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your actual API token
var apiToken = "YOUR_API_TOKEN";
// 1.1.1.1 is your player acting as a server
// 2.2.2.2 is your player acting as a client
var ips = new List<string> { "1.1.1.1", "2.2.2.2" };
var edgegapAPI = new EdgegapAPI(apiToken);
var relaySessionAuthorization = await edgegapAPI.CreateRelaySession(ips);
// Generate JSON body for server (1.1.1.1)
var serverJsonBody = new
{
relay_address = relaySessionAuthorization.RelayAddress,
port = relaySessionAuthorization.RelayServerPort,
session_authorization_token = relaySessionAuthorization.SessionAuthorizationToken,
user_authorization_token = relaySessionAuthorization.UserAuthorizationTokens["1.1.1.1"]
};
var serverJson = JsonSerializer.Serialize(serverJsonBody);
Console.WriteLine($"JSON body for server (1.1.1.1):\n{serverJson}");
// Generate JSON body for client (2.2.2.2)
var clientJsonBody = new
{
relay_address = relaySessionAuthorization.RelayAddress,
port = relaySessionAuthorization.RelayClientPort,
session_authorization_token = relaySessionAuthorization.SessionAuthorizationToken,
user_authorization_token = relaySessionAuthorization.UserAuthorizationTokens["2.2.2.2"]
};
var clientJson = JsonSerializer.Serialize(clientJsonBody);
Console.WriteLine($"JSON body for client (2.2.2.2):\n{clientJson}");
}
}
Interacting with API (cURL or POSTMAN)
While developing your game, you'll need to interact with the API to create, manage, and delete relay sessions. You can use tools like cURL or POSTMAN to send HTTP requests to the API.
cURL is a command-line tool that allows you to make HTTP requests and interact with APIs directly from the terminal. POSTMAN is a popular graphical user interface (GUI) application that simplifies API testing by providing a user-friendly interface to create, send, and analyze HTTP requests.
Here's an example of how to create a relay session using cURL:
