ez-steam-api

This is a synchronous/blocking, flat, C-style wrapper around the Steamworks SDK, originally designed for use via foreign function interfaces.

This repository also includes a Node/JavaScript wrapper that is based on Koffi. I used that wrapper for an Electron-based game on Steam.

Motivation

The Steamworks API is native C++, with an optional flat/C-style API. Unfortunately, I found both provided options cumbersome in my project, for a few reasons:

• Callbacks are designed to be polled each frame--a hassle for event-driven environments
• Callbacks and call results are C++ member functions, with no out-of-the-box support for blocking (synchronous results) or promises
• The language I was using (JavaScript) doesn't have a good C++ interop story (whereas C interop is ubiquitous)

Design

Internally, ez-steam-api spins up a thread for running Steam's callbacks and takes care of marshaling results back to calling threads (who just see a trivial synchronous API).

The synchronous, flat API can be trivially used with C-based foreign function interfaces that many languages provide. See the JavaScript wrapper in this repository for an example.

Functionality and status

Currently, this library only exposes the functionality I needed for my game (listed below). Note: The code quality is "hobby ready" (as opposed to "production ready"). I have tested on Windows (VS 2019) and Linux (G++ 9) only.

• Retrieve player's "persona name" (display name)
• Retrieve the player's preferred language for this game
• Get, set, and persist achievements
• Set leaderboard scores
• Retrieve friends' leaderboard scores

Feel free to open an issue or pull request to add additional functionality.

Usage

For Electron/Node/JavaScript usage, see the README for the npm package.

Here is an example using the C API:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "ez-steam-api.h"

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    unsigned int app_id = 12345; // Replace with your app id
    int should_exit = 0;

    // Initialize Steam
    if (!ez_steam_start(app_id, &should_exit)) {
        return -1;
    }
    else if (should_exit) {
        return 0;
    }

    // Print the user's "persona" (display) name
    char* name = 0;
    if (ez_steam_user_name_get(&name)) {
        printf("Name: %s\n", name);
        ez_steam_string_free(name);
    }

    // Print the user's language selection for this app/game
    char *language = 0;
    if (ez_steam_app_language_get(&language)) {
        printf("Language: %s\n", language);
        ez_steam_string_free(language);
    }

    // Set an achievement (this assumes an achievement named "FOOBAR" exists for the app)
    int newly_achieved = 0;
    if (ez_steam_achievement_set("FOOBAR", &newly_achieved) && newly_achieved) {
        ez_steam_achivements_store();
    }

    // Get a friend leaderboard (this assumes a leaderboard named "Score" exists for the app)
    unsigned long long leaderboard = 0;
    if (ez_steam_leaderboard_get("Score", &leaderboard)) {
        char *json = 0;
        if (ez_steam_leaderboard_get_friend_scores(leaderboard, &json)) {
            printf("Leaderboard as JSON: %s\n", json);
            ez_steam_string_free(json);
        }
    }

    ez_steam_stop();
    return 0;
}