Titledb alternatives?

[jonasmare]

Looks like titledb has gone under... at least there hasn't been updates for months
Even if it comes back it would be a good idea to have more sources to pull data from
Anyone know of any alternatives that SLM can use?

[trembon]

this is has already been mentioned in #57 to try replace it, but that time it was down and came back up after some time
i looked at the ownfoil way and its not hard to generate the titles.json file, the hard part is to host it somewhere as the file size generated is larger than most free alternatives allow
it is possible to have it hosted by github the same way ownfoil does, but what i have seen the speeds are very slow, i so dont feel that is a valid replacement

[Komarulon]

From what I can see, ownfoil just references titledb anyway:

https://github.com/a1ex4/ownfoil/blob/master/app/titledb.py
https://github.com/a1ex4/ownfoil/blob/master/app/constants.py
TITLEDB_URL = 'https://github.com/blawar/titledb.git'

I've been hunting a way to generate the titles & versions for about a week now without success... All methods seem to reference Nut or tinfoil https://tinfoil.media/repo/db/titles.us.en.json which I would guess uses titledb under the hood anyway!

You can try to generate it with Nut, but it requires cdn.Shogun (at least for versions.json), which is a deleted or private repository.

[trembon]

ownfoil generates the titlesdb file via GitHub Actions and zip the results, the code then downloads it and unzips the relevant language

https://github.com/a1ex4/ownfoil/blob/master/.github/workflows/region_titles.yml

[Komarulon]

That action references Nut and titledb as well. Looks like it clones the GitHub repos for Nut and titledb, then runs a python script using Nut.

[jonasmare]

the hard part is to host it somewhere as the file size generated is larger than most free alternatives allow

The files SLM uses are less than 200MB, aint a way to generate only this files?

You can try to generate it with Nut, but it requires cdn.Shogun (at least for versions.json), which is a deleted or private repository.
That action references Nut and titledb as well. Looks like it clones the GitHub repos for Nut and titledb, then runs a python script using Nut.

From what I remember the methods to get the data directly from nintendo's cdn were well known early on but people abused it hence it sort of got pushed underground.
Tools like this were used which i believe is similar to how titledb is created too https://gbatemp.net/threads/cdnx-cdn-downloader.504155/

[jonasmare]

Heres a few more from the past

https://gbatemp.net/threads/hacdn-v3-safely-download-your-switch-eshop-purchases-on-your-pc.504091
https://gbatemp.net/threads/hacdn-dangerously-download-your-switch-eshop-purchases-on-your-pc-now-in-c.504295

https://gbatemp.net/threads/cdnsp-download-repack-your-games-updates-and-dlcs-to-nsp.510096/page-39#post-10505995
https://gbatemp.net/threads/cdnsp-is-not-dead-they-just-dont-want-us-to-use-it.520819

[trembon]

many sites that allow free hosting have maximum files sizes of maybe 10 och 100 mb, so its to large for that
the problem is not generating the json files from the blawar nut project, its having it hosted somewhere

and including the nut project is not an alternetive either, as that will require python and git to be installed on the computer running it and will make the download and running this app more complicated, which i dont want

and using the cdn is one alternative, but that will require quite i bit of a rewrite i think, as of now we use the titledb.json as a database and assume everything is there instead of having to fetch the data from the cdn when we might need it

[jonasmare]

it is possible to have it hosted by github the same way ownfoil does, but what i have seen the speeds are very slow, i so dont feel that is a valid replacement

i mean this would at least be better than nothing.

[trembon]

seems like the problem is with the nut/titledb repo, hopefully it can be resolved there otherwise we need to look for an alternative source all toghether as ownfoil uses the same source

[jonasmare]

There's this not so ideal solution https://github.com/masagrator/versionDumper
The file generated however is a versions.txt and not versions.json

[Komarulon]

I was going to make a short script to translate versions.txt into versions.json. Versions.txt doesn't contain the date though, I'm not sure how important that is.

[Komarulon]

Translated the file into versions.json and uploaded it, using 1900-01-01 as update basis.
Two versions, one with the single listed update, and one with mocked previous updates (by subtracting 65536):

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Komarulon/32d31e24c8e3b9adfad2b2f05ed12d17/raw/ad03b5a6a668a9df2d46c2faf5b62af2f24f5bb4/versions.json

(mocked previous updates by subtracting 65536):
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Komarulon/b4238e2217e3a6256d370f4bb078d025/raw/f5b5a1844df859fdaef6541218d2591059619868/gistfile1.txt

However, I'm not picking it up in "Missing Updates". I've tried mucking around with a bunch of variations of data included in the titles and such, including adding missing titles with some default data (truncated a bunch of fields to save space... really hoping that isn't causing my issues, but I don't think so, because a different title is in Missing Updates correctly): https://github.com/Komarulon/switch-version-scripts/blob/main/titles-injected.json

For example, this is not in Missing Updates, and is on update 65536, but I've fed it everything I can to suggest that it requires an update:

[jonasmare]

You tried hard scan and updated prod.kes?
titles.json also has release date so maybe versions.json needs a valid date.
if the date on versions.json is older than the one on titles.json or vice-versa perhaps it ignores the info listed under the older date even if the update version is a higher number.

When you run SLM make sure it isn't downloading the old versions automatically.

[Komarulon]

Updated prod.keys, did hard scans, thank you. I tried a few more times messing around with dates (e.g. mocking the date in the title.json file to be earlier than the versions.json dates, which I updated to be in sequential order in 2025 so as to be reasonable). Unfortunately no success there.

That file also doesn't contain DLC as well so there's definitely going to be a lot of gaps taking that approach. I'd have to look closer into Switch Library Manager to see what exactly it uses to determine Missing Updates to mock the json in any useful extent.

However, titledb has updated for now: blawar/titledb#2

[blawar]

you can try to generate it with Nut, but it requires cdn.Shogun (at least for versions.json), which is a deleted or private repository.

It's private, due to abuse. But it wouldn't matter if it wasn't, since it needed to be updated for newer firmware which is why titledb was down in the first place. Whenever titledb goes down for an extended period of time, its almost always due to new firmware version that must be fixed.

There is no other way to automatically and reliably get game update metadata.

I welcome any help offered to update nut when new firmware versions drop.