So You Want To Write A SAM Library

Or, talking to i2p for people who aren’t really used to reading specs

One of the best features of I2P, in my opinion, is it’s SAM API, which can be used to build a bridge between I2P and your application or language of choice. Currently, dozens of SAM libraries exist for a variety of languages, including:

• i2psam, for c++
• libsam3, for C
• txi2p for Python
• i2plib for Python
• i2p.socket for Python
• leaflet for Python
• gosam, for Go
• sam3 for Go
• node-i2p for nodejs
• haskell-network-anonymous-i2p
• i2pdotnet for .Net languages
• rust-i2p
• and i2p.rb for ruby

If you’re using any of these languages, you may be able to port your application to I2P already, using an existing library. That’s not what this tutorial is about, though. This tutorial is about what to do if you want to create a SAM library in a new language. In this tutorial, I will implement a new SAM library in Java. I chose Java because there isn’t a Java library that connects you to SAM yet, because of Java’s use in Android, and because it’s a language almost everybody has at least a little experience with, so hopefully you can translate it into a language of your choice.

Creating your library

How you set up your own library will vary depending on the language you wish to use. For this example library, we’ll be using java so we can create a library like this:

mkdir jsam
cd jsam
gradle init --type java-library

Or, if you are using gradle 5 or greater:

gradle init --type java-library --project-name jsam

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