protocol-doc.md

Protocol

Pokemon Showdown's protocol is relatively simple.

Pokemon Showdown is implemented in SockJS. SockJS is a compatibility layer over raw WebSocket, so you can actually connect to Pokemon Showdown directly using WebSocket:

ws://sim.psim.us:8000/showdown/websocket
  or
wss://sim.psim.us/showdown/websocket

Incoming messages

Messages from the user to the server are in the form:

ROOMID|TEXT

ROOMID can optionally be left blank if it's the lobby, or if the room is irrelevant (for instance, if TEXT is a command like /join lobby where it doesn't matter what room it's sent from, you can just send |/join lobby.)

TEXT can contain newlines, in which case it'll be treated the same way as if each line were sent to the room separately.

A partial list of available commands can be found with /help.

Outgoing messages

Messages from the server to the user are in the form:

>ROOMID
MESSAGE
MESSAGE
MESSAGE
...

>ROOMID and the newline after it can be omitted if the room is lobby or global. MESSAGE cannot start with >, so it's unambiguous whether or not >ROOMID has been omitted.

As for the payload: it's made of any number of blocks of data separated by newlines; empty lines should be ignored. In particular, it should be treated the same way whether or not it ends in a newline, and if the payload is empty, the entire message should be ignored.

If MESSAGE doesn't start with |, it should be shown directly in the room's log. Otherwise, it will be in the form:

|TYPE|DATA

For example:

|j| Some dude
|c|@Moderator|hi!
|c| Some dude|you suck and i hate you!
Some dude was banned by Moderator.
|l| Some dude
|b|battle-ou-12| Cool guy|@Moderator

This might be displayed as:

Some dude joined.
@Moderator: hi!
Some dude: you suck and i hate you!
Some dude was banned by Moderator.
Some dude left.
OU battle started between Cool guy and Moderator

For bandwidth reasons, there are five message types: chat, join, leave, name, and battle, which are sometimes abbreviated to c, j, l, n, and b respectively. All other message types are written out in full so they should be easy to understand.

Four of these can be uppercase: J, L, N, and B, which are the equivalent of their lowercase versions, but are recommended not to be displayed inline because they happen too often. For instance, the main server gets around 5 joins/leaves a second, and showing that inline with chat would make it near-impossible to chat.

Some outgoing message types

USER = a user, the first character being their rank (users with no rank are represented by a space), and the rest of the string being their username.

Room initialization

|init|ROOMTYPE

The first message received from a room when you join it. ROOMTYPE is one of: chat or battle

|users|USERLIST

USERLIST is a comma-separated list of USERs, sent from chat rooms when they're joined.

Room messages

||MESSAGE or MESSAGE

We received a message MESSAGE, which should be displayed directly in the room's log.

|html|HTML

We received an HTML message, which should be sanitized and displayed directly in the room's log.

|join|USER or |j|USER

USER joined the room.

|leave|USER or |l|USER

USER left the room.

|name|USER|OLDID or |n|USER|OLDID

A user changed name to USER, and their previous userid was OLDID.

|chat|USER|MESSAGE or |c|USER|MESSAGE

USER said MESSAGE. Note that MESSAGE can contain | characters, so you can't just split by | and take the fourth string.

|battle|ROOMID|USER1|USER2 or |b|ROOMID|USER1|USER2

A battle started between USER1 and USER2, and the battle room has ID ROOMID.

Battle messages

Battle messages aren't documented yet.

I'll document all the message types eventually, but for now this should be enough to get you started. You can watch the data sent and received from the server on a regular connection, or look at the client source code for a full list of message types.

Global messages

|popup|MESSAGE

Show the user a popup containing MESSAGE. || denotes a newline in the popup.

|pm|SENDER|RECEIVER|MESSAGE

A PM was sent from SENDER to RECEIVER containing the message MESSAGE.

|usercount|USERCOUNT

USERCOUNT is the number of users on the server.

|nametaken|USERNAME|MESSAGE

You tried to change your username to USERNAME but it failed for the reason described in MESSAGE.

|challstr|KEYID|CHALLENGE

You tried to log in, and we need confirmation that it's really you.

Make an HTTP request to http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/action.php?act=upkeep&challengekeyid=KEYID&challenge=CHALLENGE

The response will start with ] and be followed by a JSON object which we'll call data.

Finish the rename by sending: /trn NAME,0,ASSERTION where NAME is your desired username and ASSERTION is data.assertion.

|updateuser|NAME|NAMED|AVATAR

Your name or avatar was successfully changed. Your username is now NAME. NAMED will be 0 if you are a guest or 1 otherwise. And your avatar is now AVATAR.

|formats|FORMATSLIST

This server supports the formats specified in FORMATSLIST. FORMATSLIST is a |-separated list of FORMATs. FORMAT is a format name with one or more of these suffixes: ,# if the format uses random teams, ,, if the format is only available for searching, and , if the format is only available for challenging.

|updatesearch|JSON

JSON is a JSON object representing the current state of what battles the user is currently searching for.

|updatechallenges|JSON

JSON is a JSON object representing the current state of who the user is challenging and who is challenging the user.

|queryresponse|QUERYTYPE|JSON

JSON is a JSON object representing containing the data that was requested with /query QUERYTYPE or /query QUERYTYPE DETAILS.

Possible queries include /query roomlist and /query userdetails USERNAME.