# uo-link sidecar

The Rust half of the bridge. It terminates the loopback link to the ServUO shard and (as it grows) exposes WebSocket + REST to the website.

```
website ──WS (live feed) / REST (queries)──►  sidecar  ──loopback TCP 127.0.0.1:7788──►  shard
                                              (this)      newline-JSON, bidirectional
```

The sidecar is the TCP **listener**; the shard dials out to it. That is what keeps the game unreachable from the website — the game exposes no port of its own. See `../docs/PLAN.md` §2.

## Run

```bash
cargo run                 # info logging
RUST_LOG=debug cargo run  # see every event, incl. pong heartbeats
```

Binds `127.0.0.1:7788` and waits for the shard to connect. Boot the shard (or it will reconnect on its own) and watch `server.hello` arrive.

## Status

| Piece | State |
|-------|-------|
| Shard link (`shard.rs`) | **done** — accepts the shard, reads events, sends commands, re-accepts on disconnect. Verified against the live shard: received `server.hello`, round-tripped a `ping`→`pong`, and reconnected after a sidecar restart. |
| WebSocket feed (website ← live events) | not started |
| REST queries (char profile, roster, vendor snapshot, link submit) | not started |
| SQLite persistence (event history, economy, cached profiles, link map) | not started |

## Design

- **`shard.rs`** — `serve()` binds the listener and accepts shard connections in a loop. Each connection splits into read/write halves: the read half parses newline-JSON into `ShardEvent { kind, value }` and forwards them; the write half drains an mpsc of command lines. `ShardHandle::send` posts a command to whichever shard is currently connected, and **drops with a warning if none is** — a website query during a shard outage should fail fast and retry, not queue behind a reconnect. Live *events* that must survive an outage are buffered by the shard, not here.
- **`main.rs`** — wires it together and, for now, logs events by kind. Later phases fan `ShardEvent`s out to the WebSocket broadcaster and SQLite, and turn REST calls into shard commands via `ShardHandle`.

## Wire protocol

Every line is one JSON object with `t` (epoch ms) and `kind`. The shard→sidecar events and sidecar→shard commands are catalogued in `../docs/PLAN.md` (§5 data catalog, §7 protocol) and were all validated end-to-end while building the plugin. Notable inbound commands the sidecar will issue: `char.request`, `account.roster`, `vendor.snapshot`, `link.confirm`, `towncrier.add`/`remove`, `ping`.