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hashbittorrenttorrentmagnet-uri

Hash calculation in torrent clients

I was wondering if someone knows what a "hash" in a BitTorrent client is referring to, it is clearly not the hashcode of the file, but something different.

I think thats more a magnet link to a file, but how is this connected to the file itself?

I just want to understand the construct behind the scene.
File <--> Hash <---> hash in torrent client

Solution

  • The hash in a torrent client or the hashyou find in a magnet-URI is the SHA1-hash of the raw bencoded info-dictionary-part of a torrent-file.

    To understand how that works you need to know two things:

    • How a torrent-file is built.

    • How bencodeing is done.

    Both of these are explained in the offical bittorrent specification that you can find here: http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html

    However I recommed that you instead read the inoffical specification that you can find here: https://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification
    as it is much easier to understand.