[tor-dev] Orbot: request hidden service from other app

[Bernd]

Hello,

I'm going to write an Android app that needs a hidden service, specifically
I want to implement a client for the TorChat protocol on Android. TorChat
needs a hidden service to receive incoming connections and it needs to know
its own .onion name to be able to advertise it to others.

Some of you might know my first implementation of it for Windows came
bundled  with the tor executable and simply started and stopped its very
own tor process with its own configuration inside its own private directory
and then simply read the hostname file from the hidden service directory to
learn its own .onion hostname, this was pragmatic and probably not very
elegant but it was very robust and very user friendly.

On Android I would now rather make use of Orbot and Orbot's Tor process
instead of bundling my own Tor executable. I have seen somewhere in the tor
issue tracker it was mentioned (2 years ago) that in Orbot it was planned
(and a prototype existed already) to make it possible for another app to
use Android's Intent-System to:

* request a hidden service on port xyz
* have Orbot started automatically as a result of this
* have Orbot automatically configure the HS as requested
* tell the App what the hostname of that HS is.

Is that implemented already? If it is, does there exist any documentation
or example code that makes use of it?

-Bernd