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docs(link): the cliloc table, and why §8.6's recommendation was not implementable

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Protocol 3.0 §8.6 resolved as its own website-only change, landing ahead of
§8 so the marketplace ships with real item names. Matching documentation for
website #TBD.

NEW website/CLILOCS.md — operator-facing: why the conversion step exists, how
to convert, how to configure the path, the refresh contract, what gets stored
and how names are applied.

link/v3.md §8.6 rewritten. Two things in the original recommendation turned
out to be wrong, and both are recorded because the reasoning generalises:

1. The committed db/data/clilocs.json artifact predates the Part C
   corrections (§6.1) and violates both — no committed snapshot of derived
   content, and nothing EA-derived ever shipped. UO's strings are EA's,
   exactly as the creature sprites are.
2. "scripts/buildClilocs.js reads the UO client's Cliloc.enu" is not
   possible. EVERY current client ships its cliloc files compressed (first
   DWORD's high byte 0x8E, the Mythic container); the plain layout is what
   those files looked like before that change, and parsing one as the other
   does not fail cleanly — it yields ~19k records with negative ids, 1,722
   distinct keys out of 19,508, one 62 KB "string", and a truncation
   somewhere in the middle. ServUO's own Ultima.StringList cannot read it
   either, so VendorSearch.GetItemName is already inert on such a shard and
   the work could not be pushed to the plugin.

That second point also retires an open question in §8.2: the warning never to
call GetItemName in the market sweep costs us nothing we could otherwise have
had, because the in-game Vendor Search gump has the same gap.

Three traps found by building it are recorded: StringList.SaveStringList
RE-COMPRESSES on save (its output is byte-identical to its compressed input,
because its purpose is round-tripping a file back into the client); trimming a
text line before splitting silently drops the ~half of a table that is empty
strings; and Number('') is 0, not NaN.

Also updated:
- Progress and §9 sequencing tables: order 5 split into 5a (this, website
  only) and 5b (the four-repo wire change).
- website/BACKEND_DESIGN.md — shard_clilocs / shard_cliloc_meta, the three
  admin routes, and why there is no staged-approval flow and no public route.
- link/INTEGRATION.md — the char.profile field note now says explicitly not to
  expect the shard to resolve clilocs, and points at CLILOCS.md.
- §10 documentation obligations list CLILOCS.md.

Documentation only. Every claim was written after the corresponding behaviour
was observed running: the compressed-format finding and the parse failures
come from the real client files on this machine, and the counts (123,490
parsed → 67,496 stored) and timings from importing them into the live MariaDB.

PROJECT_TREE.md files are deliberately untouched — they are CI-generated by
the sync-project-tree workflow and say so in their header.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
claude
2026-07-29 04:22:05 -05:00
parent f715323aa0
commit be9f5019fa
4 changed files with 327 additions and 12 deletions
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48
website/BACKEND_DESIGN.md
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@@ -486,6 +486,51 @@ artwork: sprites live in the operator's own client `.mul`/`.uop` files and are t
redistribute. An operator supplies art via a gitignored map plus images under the (already
gitignored) `server/uploads/atlas/`. Text-only is the normal, supported state.
### shard_clilocs / shard_cliloc_meta — UO's localization table (Protocol 3.0)
Items on the wire carry a `LabelNumber`, not a name. The bridge has always sent it —
`char.profile.equipment.cliloc`, reward titles as a cliloc number in string form, and one per
marketplace listing — but with no table to resolve it against, the character sheet could only render
`id 1023721` where the game renders "quarter staff".
| Table | Shape |
|---|---|
| `shard_clilocs` | `number` INT PK, `flag`, `text` TEXT |
| `shard_cliloc_meta` | Singleton (`id = 1`), `payload` JSON (source file, sha256, count, `parserVersion`), `imported_at` |
Import-owned and all-or-nothing in one transaction, same contract as the atlas — including **`DELETE`,
not `TRUNCATE`**, for the same reason.
**Sourced from a file the operator converts once from their own UO client**, at a path from the
`cliloc_client_path` setting falling back to `UO_CLIENT_PATH`. Nothing client-derived is committed:
UO's strings are EA's, exactly as the creature sprites are. A shard with nothing configured is fully
supported — names render as ids. Full design and operator guide: [`CLILOCS.md`](CLILOCS.md).
The conversion step is not avoidable: **every current client ships its cliloc files compressed**
(first DWORD's high byte `0x8E`), and ServUO's own bundled `Ultima.StringList` cannot read that
either — so the shard cannot supply names on our behalf. The plain layout and a delimited text export
are both accepted, sniffed by header rather than extension.
Three decisions worth stating:
- **`text` is TEXT, not VARCHAR.** Long property descriptions reach 12 KB. The index that matters for
marketplace search is the denormalized `shard_vendor_items.display_name`, not this table.
- **Blank entries are dropped at import** — 123,490 parsed → **67,496** stored. Roughly half a cliloc
table is empty strings for ids the client reserves and never uses; a row that resolves to no name is
indistinguishable from no row at all, and dropping them makes the binary and text imports converge
on identical content.
- **No staged-approval flow, unlike the atlas.** The atlas escalates facet loss because a half-copied
tree and a real map change are indistinguishable from inside the process. A cliloc file is one file
with one hash, and a partial copy makes the parser fail on a truncated record — the ambiguity the
atlas must escalate is one this parser simply detects, so it refuses the import and leaves the
previous table serving.
**Resolution is server-side and there is no public route.** The table is never served *as* a table:
67k rows would dwarf any page using them, and the Android client consumes the same already-resolved
JSON. `resolveMany()` returns only ids that resolved to something displayable — placeholders like
`~1_val~` are stripped, since the bridge sends the id and never the property packet that carries the
arguments — and it never throws, because a cliloc lookup is decoration on a character sheet.
---
## 4. API contract
@@ -741,6 +786,9 @@ file a route sits in — that is the property the route manifest freezes.
| POST | `/shard/atlas/import` | re-import without restarting; `{force}` ignores the hash gate. **An unreadable tree answers 200 with `status:"unavailable"`, not 500** — `refresh()` reports outcomes rather than throwing (the boot path must never be blocked by a bad tree) and that contract is preserved at the API. |
| POST | `/shard/atlas/approve` · `/shard/atlas/reject` | answer a refresh staged because it would REMOVE a facet. Approving **re-parses** the tree, so what lands matches it at approval time; rejecting is remembered against those source hashes so it does not re-prompt every restart. 404 when nothing is staged. |
| PUT | `/shard/atlas/path` | point the atlas at a different tree (persisted as `spawn_atlas_servuo_path`, which wins over `SERVUO_PATH`). Blank clears it. Deliberately **does not import** — moving the mount and reloading the world are separate decisions — and returns fresh status so the panel can offer the import next. |
| GET | `/shard/clilocs` | cliloc-table status (`adminOnly`): the configured path, the file actually resolved (the path may be a directory), readability, drift against what is loaded, and the entry count. `configured:false` is a supported state — item names then render as ids. No public counterpart: the table is never served *as* a table. |
| POST | `/shard/clilocs/import` | reload after a client patch; `{force}` ignores the hash gate. **A missing file — or the likely mistake of pointing at the client's own COMPRESSED `Cliloc.enu` — answers 200 with `status:"unavailable"` and a `code`, not 500.** `COMPRESSED` is called out by name: a 500 would say only "something broke", and the operator needs to be told which file to convert. |
| PUT | `/shard/clilocs/path` | point the site at a different cliloc file or directory (persisted as `cliloc_client_path`, which wins over `UO_CLIENT_PATH`). Blank clears it. Deliberately **does not import**, same reasoning as the atlas path. |
Every admin write logs to `activity_log`.