How to convert base32 to base16 info hashes

Using info-hashes as download handles.

When interfacing qBittorrent through the WebUI api, there are cases when you add a download via a magnet URI and then you want to track its state (for instance, to perform certain file operation once it's finished). The problem here is that the /command/download method does not return a handle to the download for you to track it. On the other hand, webUI api methods refer to every download through its info-hash, so it's possible to use that string as a handle. As every magnet URI will contain, al least, the info-hash (as stated in this document at BitTorrent.org) you can parse the hash string from the uri itself. These hashes are base16 encoded, for a total of 40 characters.

Special case: base32 encoded info-hashes.

For compatibility reasons, the same document states that clients should also support the 32 character base32 encoded info-hash. When adding such a magnet link, qBittorrent will automatically convert it to a base16 hash, and you end up with a mismatching handle (the original base32 encoded info-hash and the base16 one used by qBittorrent). In this situation it's necessary to previously re-encode the hash yourself. Basically you need to decode the base32 hash and then re-encode it to base16, this way you´ll have the same string as qBittorrent.

Example:

Suppose you have the following magnet link:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:WRN7ZT6NKMA6SSXYKAFRUGDDIFJUNKI2

if it´s added to qBittorrent and then you issue a /query/torrents command, you´ll get a JSON object like this (fields other than "hash" are omitted):

[{...,"hash":"b45bfccfcd5301e94af8500b1a1863415346a91a",...},...]

which shows how qBittorrent converted our base32 hash to its base16 representation.

How to implement the base conversion:

If you're into python, this base conversion can be accomplished as follows:

>>> import base64
>>> b32Hash = "WRN7ZT6NKMA6SSXYKAFRUGDDIFJUNKI2"
>>> b16Hash = base64.b16encode(base64.b32decode(b32Hash))
>>> b16Hash = b16Hash.lower()
>>> print (b16Hash)

which will output: b'b45bfccfcd5301e94af8500b1a1863415346a91a'

In Delphi, you can make use of the excellent SZCodeBaseX library by Sasa Zeman (available for D4 to D2007, support seems to be dropped by now, but it's still available here. This is a simple console application just to show how to perform the base conversion:

program Project1;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  SysUtils,
  SZCodeBaseX in '<path to the library>';

var
  b32Hash: AnsiString;
  b16Hash: AnsiString;

begin
  b32Hash:= 'WRN7ZT6NKMA6SSXYKAFRUGDDIFJUNKI2';
  b16Hash:= SZEncodeBase16(SZDecodeBase32(b32Hash));
  b16Hash:= LowerCase(b16Hash);
  Writeln(b16Hash);
end.

If you compile and run Project1.exe, it´ll output the converted hash string.

Notice in both cases you need to perform a lowercase conversion of the resulting string.