GeniusWeb

GeniusWeb is an open architecture for negotiation via the internet. This page describes the core and general architecture. General info on GeniusWeb, including tutorials, can be found on the ​GeniusWeb main page.

The core of the architecture is a ​JSON based communication protocol that standardizes the communication messages comprising a negotiation. So at the top level we can distinguish

• The core, which is the definition of all the fundamental components (such as issues, values, bids, utilities, profiles, parties, protocols)
• The web architecture, which defines how communication between the core elements can be realized with ​websockets.

This page describes the java-based core. This page shows the json structures mostly by example. The details of the core are spelled out by a java-based reference implementation contained here. There is also a python-based core to support python-based programming.

GeniusWeb overview

The web architecture is split into 3 main parts:

• a runserver, where an actual negotiation is run. Running a negotiation means execution of the negotiation protocol (as specified in the core) over websockets
• a partiesserver, where a party (as specified in the core) can be hooked into a websocket. There are actually 2 types of partiesserver: the "partiesserver" which serves java-based parties, and a pythonpartiesserver which serves python-based parties.
• a profilesserver, where profiles are served over websockets.

The services cooperate as in this diagram:

The runserver only runs the protocol. The protocol receives the run instructions which include the calls (URLs) to run the party and the URLs to open the profile (which is just passed on to the party). After calling the URLs each party runs on a partyserver. Each party in turn receives and opens the provided profile URL.

The web architecture is detailed on the wiki pages of these servers.

GeniusWeb contains a number of components

name	description	code, more information
the core	description and java reference implementation of the data structures for issues, values, bids, profiles, events and actions, parties etc.	here
python core	c-python-3 implementation of core with example parties	​GeniusWebPython
profilesserver	A profilesserver is a web server providing links to a library of profiles and domain descriptions. The profiles are dynamic- they can change even during a negotiation. The profilesserver wiki explains the profilesserver web architecture and contains a java-based web server reference implementation	​profiles server
partiesserver	The partiesserver is a webserver where negotiating parties can run. The parties communicate with a running #Protocol by exchanging JSON messages over a websocket. Different parties may run on different partiesservers. The partiesserver wiki explains the partiesserver web architecture and contains a java-based web server reference implementation that provides instances of running java-based and jython-based parties to use for negotiation	​parties server
pythonpartiesserver	A web server implementation that provides instances of running c-python based parties to use for negotiation	​python parties server
runserver	A run server is a web server that can execute negotiation #Protocols and stores the progress and outcomes. The runserver wiki explains the runserver web architecture and contains a java-based reference implementation	​run server
stand-alone GUI app	Application that has similar GUI functionality as the runserver, but as stand-alone app	​gui application
GeniusWeb 3rd parties	parties for geniusweb written by others	​3rd parties

You can either run these servers locally on either your computer or on your web server, or use a public server somewhere else.

For creating your own profile or party, you only need the core (and probably a server).

If you want to get a quick top-down idea how GeniusWeb works, we suggest to install the servers and contact the runserver to run a session.

Installation

You only need java and maven for just writing and compiling your parties, and for debugging them with the simplerunner. You can also just use Eclipse. No further installation is needed.

If you want to run parties on the webservices, check the profilesserver, partiesserver and runserver wiki pages (see above) for details on installing the geniusweb servers. If you use only java based parties, you do not need the pythonpartiesserver; if you use only python based parties, you don't need the partiesserver.

To build parties you need java (8 or higher) and maven (3.6 or higher); check how to write a party. We recommend using an IDE with java and maven support, such as Eclipse. To create profiles you need a text editor, check the profile section. The GeniusWeb core code does not need to be installed. If you want to download the GeniusWeb core code anyway, check this section.

To add/remove/change parties and profiles, the servers we provide require that you have full control over the server. Therefore you usually install your own server.

Server choice, privacy and security

You can choose to either run services privately, on your intranet, or completely open on the internet.

privacy need	configuration
completely private, no sharing with others	All services run on tomcat server(s) on your computer or intranet. Outside network access is blocked. You need copies of the profiles and parties (jar files) you want to run.
dedicated business negotiation, competition : share your party with the world, but not its code	You host your own partiesserver that is connected to the web*.
shared profile	profilesserver on own server or on an existing profilesserver on the web*
public party with built-in private profile	Hard-code the profile in the party. Party runs as in competition.
semi-private sessions/tournaments	Run your own runserver, possibly even from behind a firewall or on your local computer. Existing parties- and profilesservers are used in your runs. Negotiation results are handled only on your computer and not visible outside. Others might be able to see parties act on your behalf, but it's not trivial to determine that they are negotiating against each other, especially if these parties are on different partiesservers.
run your own protocols	as with running semi-private sessions/tournaments

Parties in GeniusWeb are very powerful, and they should also be taken into account when determining your system's security. Check the section on this.

If you want to run a truly distributed server ssytem, the firewalls have to be configured appropriately. Most corporations have firewalls restricting communication to and from outside-corporation or even within-corporation computers.

Core overview

This section gives an overview of the core functionalties.

The image below gives an overview class diagram with the GeniusWeb core modules and their functionalities. The figure also shows the 3 servers and the functions inside those. Click on the figure to zoom in.

All classes are documented in detail in the javadoc with the code. Also the serialization is annotated with the classes. Here we just give a brief overview. Later in this document we explain the serialization of a domain and profile. Also check the examples to see how this works and what typical values look like.

issuevalue

This module contains the basic objects that make up a bid: issues, values, domains, and bids.

Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

Issue

The issues are just String objects. Issue names must be unique

Value

There are two type of values: discrete values and number values. Discrete values are strings eg "low", "yes" or "1". Number values are numbers, eg -1 or 12.423. In GeniusWeb, all number values are processed as BigDecimal to avoid rounding errors.

ValueSet

A ValueSet indicates the possible values for an issue. There are 2 types of valuesets: numeric and discrete. DiscreteValueSet contains the list of DiscreteValue which is a basically a possible (string) values for the issue. NumberValueSet contains a Range which is a set of numbers defined by the minimum, maximum and stepsize (upwards from the minimum).

• a DiscreteValueSet contains a set of possible discrete values. It looks like "values", a column and then a list of discrete values (all strings) Form example, "values":["yes","no"] .
• a number valueset contains a range of numbers and looks like {"range":{"low":12.2,"high":12.6,"step":0.3}} . This example range thus contains 12.2 and 12.5 (the next one would be 12.8 but that is already outside the range). Numbers are without quotes.

Domain

A domain is a description of the allowed issues and values for each issue. To avoid confusion in a negotiation, it's important that all participants are dealing with the same domain. A Domain contains a map, with each key the issue (string) and the value a ValueSet.

When describing the domain, the set of allowed values has to be given. A domain looks like this

{"name":"jobs",
 "issuesValues":{
  "lease car":{"values":["yes","no"]},
  "permanent contract":{"values":["yes","no"]},
  "career development opportunities":{"values":["low","medium","high"]},
  "fte":{"values":["0.6","0.8","1.0"]},
  "salary":{"range":{"low":"2000, "high":"4000", "step":500} },
  "work from home":{"values":["0","1","2"]}
 }
}

• The name is just a string. Our reference implementation of the profiles server additionally requires that the name must match the filename and directory name when placed on the profiles server. So your directory must be domainsrepo/jobs and the filename must be jobs.json.

• The issueValues contains a dictionary with issues. Each issue is indicated by a name (a string), followed by a column (:) and then a ValueSet as discussed above.

To edit domains, also check the ProfileEditor.

Bid

Finally, a Bid is a Map where the key is the issue and the value either a DiscreteValue or NumberValue that is valid for that issue. DiscreteValues are serialized to json inside double quotes, NumberValues are just the numbers (no double quotes).

Here is an example of a bid in JSON format. issue 2 and issue 3 are number values, issue 1 is a discrete issue. All values in quotes are discrete values, while values without quotes are number values.

{"issuevalues":{
  "issue3":9012345678901234567.89,
  "issue2":1,
  "issue1":"b"
}}

Your party can create any bid that it likes but the protocol will check if your bid fits in the current negotiation and may kick you out of the negotiation if you don't behave properly.

If you write a java-based party, all these objects may already have been converted to Java objects. Please check issuevalue/src/main/java/geniusweb/issuevalue for conversion details.

There is not yet a domain editor available so you have to create domains by manually editing a file with JSON code.

profile

A profile is a function that can tell if a bid is preferred over another bid. A profile also has a reservationBid. Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

The reservation bid is the best alternative to a non-agreement. Only bids that are equal or better should be accepted. For those used to a "reservation value", this is similar but more general: any bid that is equal or better also has a higher utility than the reservation bid. So if the profile is a utilityspace (see below), then the reservation value is in fact the utility of the reservation bid.

In the profile module a number of different types of profiles have been defined:

• FullOrdering​: this provides a function isPreferredOrEqual() that can tell if a bid is preferred over another
• PartialOrdering​: as FullyOrderedSpace, but may not know the answer for part of the bids
• UtilitySpace​: as FullOrdering, but additionally this provides a function getUtility(bid) that maps the bid into a BigDecimal in [0,1]. The higher the value, the more preferred is that bid. The Linear Additive Space​ is the most commonly used UtilitySpace. If the accuracy of BigDecimal is not needed, you can just call BigDecimal#doubleValue() to get a standard double.
• The SumOfGroupsUtilitySpace is a utilityspace where the utilities are not simply linear-additive. It defines the utility of bids as a sum of the utilities of a number of subsets, or groups, of the issue values.

Linear Additive

The most common is the LinearAdditiveUtilitySpace. It contains

• the domain description containing the possible issueValues.
• the name of the space
• the issueUtilities containing a set of ValueSetUtilities.
• The issueWeightsL a dictionary assigning a number to each of the issues. These numbers must add up to 1 and determine how much each ValueSetUtility adds to the total utility.
• a reservationBid that contains the bid that is the least preferred. Only bids equal or better than this bid should be accepted.

To give a full profile example:

{"LinearAdditiveUtilitySpace":
 {"name":"testprofile",
  "domain":{"name":"test",
  "issuesValues":{
   "issue2":{"values":["issue2value1","issue2value2"]},
   "issue1":{"values": ["issue1value1","issue1value2"]}}},
  "issueUtilities":{
   "issue2":{"numberutils":{"lowValue":12,"lowUtility":0.3,"highValue":18,"highUtility":0.6}},
   "issue1":{"discreteutils":{"valueUtilities":{"issue1value1":0.2,"issue1value2":0.3}}}},
  "issueWeights":{"issue2":0.4,"issue1":0.6},
  "reservationBid":{"issuevalues":{"issue2":"issue2value1","issue1":"issue1value2"}}
}}

A party receives a reference to a profile but has to fetch the actual profile. You can defer this task to the ProfileConnectionFactory and in that case you receive a ready-to-use parsed java object. Most likely you get a Linear Additive Utilityspace, please check profile/src/main/java/geniusweb/profile/utilityspace for conversion details.

This is an "LinearAdditiveYtilitySpace", other utilityspaces would have different contents. It contains a number of components:

• issueUtilities. Here, each issue value from the domain gets a utility assigned. The two types of issue values each having their matching utility function:

Issue Value class	Utility class	json serialization example
DiscreteValue	DiscreteValueSetUtilities	"discreteutils": { "valueUtilities": { "2000": 0, "2500": 0.25, "3000": 0.3, "3500": 0.75, "4000": 1.0 } }
NumberValue	NumberValueSetUtilities	numberutils": { "lowValue":12, "lowUtility":0.3, "highValue":18, "highUtility":0.6 }

• issueWeights: this is a map, for each issue there is a value in [0,1] and the sum of the weights in this map must be exactly 1.

• domain: identical to above. We replaced some issueValues with "..." in this example .
• name: a simple string with the name of the profile. The name must match the filename of the profile.

You can create Linear Additive profiles also with the domaineditor, check the ProfileEditor wiki.

Sum Of Groups

This is a utility space that defines the utility of bids as a sum of the utilities of a number of subsets, or groups, of the issue values.

A group defines the utility of a non-empty subset of the issues in the domain. The parts are non-overlapping. Missing issue values have utility 0.

This space enables handling UtilitySpaces that are not simply linear additive, but with interacting issue values. For example, if you would like to have a car with good speakers but only if there is also a good hifi set, you can make a part that has {@link PartsUtilities} like

{ { speakers:yes, hifi:yes }:1, {speakers, no: hifh:yes}:0.2, ...}

Partial Ordered

In an ordered bidspace, only "isPreferredOrEqual" relationships between bids are known. We use the short notation bid1 >= bid2 to indicate bid1 is preferred or equal to bid2. To test if bid1 and bid2 are exactly equal, you can apply the test bid1 >= bid2 && bid2 >= bid1. In a partial bidspace, only part of the information is available. This means that for some bids you will have neither bid1 >= bid2 nor bid2 >= bid1.

Here is a part of a example partial profile for the jobs domain in JSON format:

{
	"DefaultPartialOrdering": {
		"name": "jobs1_20",
		"domain": {
			"name": "jobs",
			"issuesValues": {
				"lease car": {
					"values": ["yes", "no"]
				}, ...
			}
		},
   		"better" : {
    			"{\"issuevalues\":{\"lease car\":\"no\",\"permanent..." : 
			[{
				"issuevalues" : {
					"lease car" : "no",
					"permanent contract" : "no",
					"career development opportunities" : "low",
					....
 				}
			},{
			}],
    			"{\"issuevalues\":{\"lease car\":\"no\",\"permanent..." : [{
			}],...
		},
		"reservationBid": {
			"issuevalues": {
				"lease car": "no",
				"permanent contract": "no",
				"career development opportunities": "low","fte": "0.6",
				"salary": "3500",
				"work from home": "1"
			}
		}
	}
}

The name, domain and reservationBid fields are as with the LinearAdditiveProfile.

• The "better" field contains a Map<Bid,List<Bid>>. If bid A is a key in this map and bid B is an element in the list of values for key A, then A is better than B.

Notice that the key is encoded as String because JSON requires this. The string contains a Bid serialized as json.

Profile Editor

We also have a Profile Editor where profiles can be edited with a GUI. Check the Profile Editor wiki page.

ProfileConnectionFactory

Parties receive a ProfileReference which is an URI from which they can fetch the profile. In a server configuration this usually will be a websocket, in testing conditions this usually will be a file. The ProfileConnectionFactory handles the burden of decyphering the URI, connecting in the right way, waiting for the response, parsing the JSON code to an object etc. The typical use is

	profileint = ProfileConnectionFactory.create(URI, reporter);

This returns a ProfileInterface for further use.

You can now use this profileint in two ways

1. Listen for updates: profileint.addListener(yourListener) . yourListener will be called every time a new profile is available
2. Use the latest version of the profile whenever you need it, and wait for it if there is no version available yet. currentProfile=profileint.getProfile().

There is a limitation on the ProfileConnectionFactory that might become relevant if you handle very large profiles: the websocket handler is currently limited to profiles of at most 200kB in size. This is because websockets use fixed buffer sizes. Let us know if this is an issue, we can change this limit.

When your party terminates, remember to close the created ProfileInterface to avoid memory leaks.

Events

The events module contains inform objects, action objects and event objects.

Inform

Inform objects are used to inform parties about events that happened in a negotiation. We have

inform object	meaning
Settings	usually sent as first inform to a party, indicating start of the session and providing the party name, protocol, profile, deadline etc
YourTurn	Indicating that the party receiving this inform now has the turn. Generally indicating that party is expected to make an offer
ActionDone	Informing that some party did an action
Finished	Indicating that a session has been finished
Voting	The party is expected to send in Votes. A map of the powers of all participating parties is provided
OptIn	The party is expected to send in Votes. Usually this is a follow-up for a Voting round

These objects can be used slightly different, depending on the protocol.

Please check the source code of Inform objects for all the details especially on the json serialization.

Actions

Actions are objects that are sent by the party, indicating it does a negotiation action. We have

action object	meaning
Offer	The party offers some bid to the other parties
Accept	The party informs the protocol that it can accept a specific bid. Usually this bid has to be offered by some other party
Comparison	The party informs that it prefers certain bids over others
ElicitComparison	The party informs that it would like to hear a Comparison
EndNegotiation	The party informs that it is done negotiating and leaves immediately. Possibly without a deal if there was no deal yet for this party.
Votes	The party informs that it gives specific votes to bids. A vote is a conditional accept, it contains a Bid but an additional 'minPower' indicating the minimum power and maximum power that a deal must have.

Again, the details of how to use the actions is determined by the protocol. For instance some protocols may accept an Accept with a bid that was not previously made, while other protocols may prohibit such an action.

Events

The events module inside the events package is ment for internal communication. Protocols can generate such events to inform protocol users about the state of the negotiation.

Voting

The voting package contains utility functions supporting the voting mechanisms. The CollectedVotes object is a utility class, to search potential deals hidden in sets of votes.

VotingEvaluator

The votingevaluator is a function that can, given a set of votes, determine the exact deal(s) from a set of votes. There are different ways to do this. Currently we have

VotingEvaluator	Behaviour
LargestAgreement	Take the first possible agreement, and take the largest possible agreement. Stop after first agreement.
LargestAgerementsLoop	collects all possible {@link Agreements}. We're finished only when all parties have an agreement, except possibly 1 party.

Party

A party is a program that receives inform messages from the protocol, and can send the actions it wants to take regarding the negotiation back to the protocol. Because this is a program rather than a data class, immediately a number of issues arise:

• A party is not defined as a json object. It can not directly be serialized and put into a json representation.
• it requires a programming language to be written
• The party has to be executed. This typically is done using the appropriate interpreters and virtual machines within a partiesserver, but can also be done in a standalone program like the simplerunner.

The way the actions (represented as json strings) are communicated between parties and the protocol can be implemented in different ways. When using a partiesserver and runserver, websockets are used. But when running in a simplerunner, messages can be communicated through direct calls.

Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

GeniusWeb uses java for a reference implementation. The party module contains basic interfaces for implementing your negotiation party. These interfaces are only relevant to create a party compatible with our reference implementation of the ​partiesserver. The main class is Party, which defines the basic functionality required for a negotiation party on our server. The heart of the party is that your Party implements Connectable<Inform,Action>. Connectable contains 2 main functions: connect and disconnect. When connect is called, your party receives a Connection over which it receives Inform objects and can send Action objects. What exactly is sent and received is determined by the protocol (see the protocol section below). For example if the SAOP protocol is used, your party will receive a YourTurn message, after which it decides on its action and sends it into the Connection. See also the example party discussed below.

Capabilities

The party specifies its capabilities. Currently capacilities contains the supported behaviours and profiles.

The 'behaviours'is a list of behaviours that the party can handle. The 'behaviour' is just a string but it refers to a specific behaviour

behaviour name	abbreviation for	expected behaviour
SAOP	Stacked alternating offers protocol	First, this party receives SessionSettings. After that it receives an ActionDone if a party does an action. The party takes an action only after YourTurn is received. It can then either Accept, EndNegotiation or Offer. Accept is possible only after another Offer was received
MOPAC	Multiple Offers PArtial Consensus	First, this party receives SessionSettings. The party waits for a YourTurn. It then sends an Offer. The party now waits for a Voting after which it replies with Votes. The party now waits for OptIn and it again replies with Votes, possible extending the previous Votes. The party now loops, waiting again for YourTurn etc.
COB	compare bids protocol.	This party receives SessionSettings. It also receives ActionDone if a party does an action, containing a ElicitComparison action if its partner SHAOP party requests so. If it receives that, the party responds with Comparison action.
SHAOP	Stacked human alternating offers protocol	similar to SAOP. A party of this type must receive parameter elicitationcost. If not, the DEFAULT_ELICITATATION_COST​ is used. After receiving a YourTurn action, this party can execute the usual SAOP actions (Accept, EndNegotiation or Offer). At any time (also when it does not have the turn) it can do a ElicitComparison action. The call results in the associated COB party to execute a Comparison action, which is then received in an ActionDone.| Each ElicitComparison call will add elicitationcost to the party's spendings.|
Learn	Learning protocol	A party receives Settings. Settings has no valid profileref. Parameters include "persistentstate" and "negotiationdata". Party can immediately start learning, respecting the deadline in the progress field. When done, send a LearningDone action. There is no negotiation with other parties in this session. See also the next section.

The profiles is a list of classes that implement a Profile. The party supports all profile classes in the list (including subclasses).

More on Learning

A party of course can always learn from the sessions it does. It does not have wait to be used in a Learn protocol. However the party will have to make the learned information persistent, so that it can be reused in a next run. Additionally, learning usually takes more time than is available in a session.

A simple way to do this is to store the data in a file. This is less trivial than it looks, because (1) there may be others using the file at the same time, particularly other copies of your party running at the same time (2) the next time, your party may run on an entirely different machine, with no access to the previously written file.

Our current approach tries to alleviate some of these issues. If the party is expected to be learning, a parameter negotiationdata is passed to the party at startup, containing a FileLocation. This should contain a non-existing file. The idea is that your party can write essential data to be learned from to this file, and that the learning will take place later in a Learn session. In the meantime, another parameter persistentstate holds info learned so far.

When a Learn session is entered, the party receives again its persistentstate, but now it has enough time to actually learn and update the persistentstate. It now also receives a list of negotiationdata objects, containing all the values it received previously. Now the party can read back what it wrote in the previous sessions, do the learning, and update the persistentstate file.

Notice that this approach does not solve the assumption that each party runs on the same machine every time. For now, this is simply assumed to be the case. Our current partiesserver implementations run all parties on a single machine.

Timeline

The timeline module describes the deadline and a progress objects.

Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

The deadline indicates how much time a negotiation session can take and is used to specify the settings for a session or tournament. Two examples:

{"deadlinerounds":{"rounds":100,"durationms":999}}

and

{"deadlinetime":{"durationms":2000}}

• durationms indicates the maximum run time in milliseconds for the party. The clock starts ticking at the moment the party receives its SessionSettings object.
• rounds indicates the maximum number of rounds in the session. The session will end after this number of rounds, deal or no deal.

The progress indicates where currently running session is towards the deadline. Progress is contained in the settings object. Round based progress must be updated by the party after each round.

References

The references module contains references to remote parties, domains, profiles and protocols that are stored on remote machines. Additionally it contains the interface specifications for connections to remote objects, and some general server objects.

Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

References

We use IRI's (internationalized resource identifier, which looks similar to the well known URLs you use in your web browser) to refer to them. These IRI's are packed inside objects like the PartyRef, ProtocolRef, ProfileRef, DomainRef so that it is clear what type of object the IRI is referring to. For example, when your party is initialized, it usually receives a Settings object that contains a ProfileRef. The intention is that the party fetches the actual profile from the web, using the IRI in the ProtocolRef. See the example party below for an example.

There are a number of schemes used for references:

scheme	used with	example	comments
http:	party	​http://localhost:8080/partiesserver/run/randompyparty-1.0.0
ws:	profile	ws://localhost:8080/profilesserver/websocket/get/jobs/jobs1.json
file:	profile	file:src/test/settings.json	gives file relative to local current working dir
classpath:	party	classpath:geniusweb.exampleparties.randomparty.RandomParty	must be in classpath

Connection

The connection objects are used to describe a general connection with a remote Connectable that can respond to requests or take actions pro-actively. The Connection object defines a connection to a Connectable. A ConnectionFactory can create a Connection given a Reference.

serverobjects

Here we store objects that are also used in communication with servers.

The ServerInfo object contains information about a runserver. Currently it contains the number of free slots and the total number of available slots on the server.

OpponentModel

This is a category of classes that can estimate the opponent's profile from the bids that he places. The basic interface of OpponentModel is :

public interface OpponentModel extends Profile {
	OpponentModel with(Domain domain, Bid resBid);

	OpponentModel with(Parameters parameters);

	OpponentModel with(Action action, Progress progress);
}

The implementations are assumed to be immutable. The two with() functions return an updated OpponentModel. The with(domain,resBid) must be called first to initialize the model. After that, the model updates according to actions done by the party that is being modeled.

Implementation	behaviour	parameters
FrequencyOpponentModel	Counts for each issue the frequency of offered values to estimate opponent UtilitySpace.	-
BayesianOpponentModel	Learns which of a number of hypothetical utility curves fits best to the received Bids. Mainly as research tool and example, not recommended for use.	sigma in [0.00001, 100000], decay in [0,1]

BOA

Boa (Bidding, Opponent Model, Acceptance Model) is an attempt to split negotiation into three basic components: modeling the opponent's profile, determining a proper next action and determining when to accept ​see paper. The boa module allows parties to be written with this and provides example implementations of the components. BOA is designed to work with the SAOP protocol and with LinearAdditive profiles.

BoaParty, DefaultBoa

DefaultBoa is an abstract party that takes BOA components and makes it into a runnable Party. How this is done is discussed in #WritingaBoaParty.

BoaParty is a party that allows you to select the BOA components as needed using the Parameters. This is discussed in more detail in #BoaParty.

BoaState

The internal state information of DefaultBoa is stored in the BoaState. This allows efficient sharing of these internals with the components of a Boa party and helps improving efficiency of the code.

The BOA model uses three major components: the OpponentModel, the BiddingStrategy and the AcceptanceStrategy. OpponentModel has been discussed already (see #OpponentModel).

All subcomponents may be configurable through the parameters. The DefaultBoa just shares its state, with all parameters with all subcomponents. This means that the names of your parameters should avoid names already in use.

Bidding Strategy

A Bidding Strategy determines what to Offer in which state, through this interface function

Action getAction(BoaState state);

Technically, the Bidding Strategy can return other actions, eg EndNegotiation or Accept. However the intention of the Bidding Strategy is that Offers are returned; the AcceptanceStrategy will then replace Offers with Accepts if accepting is more appropriate.

The following implementations are provided with the Boa Framework

Implementation	behaviour	parameters
TimeDependentBiddingStrategy	Bids according to an exponentially decreasing utility target. See javadoc for details.	e,k,min,max. See javadoc for details.

You can create a custom BiddingStrategy by just implementing the BiddingStrategy interface.

Acceptance Strategy

A Acceptance Strategy filters the action provided by the BiddingStrategy, replacing Offers with Accepts where appropriate. It works through this interface function

Action filter(Action proposedAction, BoaState boaState)

The following implementations are provided with the Boa Framework

Implementation	behaviour	parameters
TimeDependentAcceptanceStrategy	Accepts according to an exponentially decreasing utility target. See javadoc for details.	e,k,min,max. See javadoc for details.

BidSpace

The bidspace module contains functionality to support building a negotiation party. Especially for LinearAdditiveSpaces, a number of efficient tools are available that work orders of magnitude faster than brute force algorithms.

Class	description
Pareto	a category of classes that can compute the pareto frontier from a set of profiles. Pareto optimality is an important mechanism to place optimal bids. ParetoLinearAdditive can efficiently search LinearAdditiveUtilitySpace
AllBidsList	Creates a list containing all possible bids in any domain. Extremely fast; the list is created in a lazy way, and competely avoids storing anything in memory. Can handle sizes that would never fit in memory.
BidsWithUtility	A tool to efficiently search LinearAdditiveUtilitySpace for bids within a certain range.

Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

Protocol

A negotiation protocol defines the rules for a negotiation: what are the legal actions for each party during a negotiation, when does the negotiation finish, what is the outcome. The protocol module contains the functionality to define and execute a negotiation protocol.

Because of security reasons a protocol in general can not access the profiles. Instead profile URLs are handed over to the parties, who then access the protocol on their own accord. Some parties may even completely ignore the profile and use a hard built-in profile or a secret link to an unknown profile server. In some cases like assignment/competition situations, where the actions of all parties need to be evaluated in terms of utilities of placed bids, the utilities are computed in a post-processing step that usually requires the profiles to be public.

The tables in the next sections give a very short description of the protocol. The javadoc of each protocol contains all details. Javadoc is available on the ​artifactory. See downloading javadoc.

The basic classes defining a protocol are:

• The NegoSettings​: these define the settings for the protocol, such as the deadline, the participants and the profile
• The NegoState​: this contains the current state of execution of the protocol. To give some example states: "waiting for bid from party 2", "ended with agreement", "ended because party 1 broke the protocol". A state also has various with() functions defining the new state from an old state and a party doing an action.
• The NegoProtocol​: this defines what happens when a negotiation starts, when a participant enters halfway the session, what are the allowed actions, what happens if a participant breaks the protocol, etc.

There are session protocols and tournament protocols.

Tournament Protocol

The tournament protocols can run a tournament containing multiple sessions. The following tournament protocols are available:

protocol (abbreviated)	full name	short description
AllPermutations	tournament, with generated sessions	Generates a set of SAOP sessions from a set of parties and profiles. This is a tournament protocol, not used for single sessions
AllPermutationsWithLearn	AllPermutations with Learning	As AllPermutations, but after the tournament a Learn session is done (and after each repeat if you set number of tournaments >1).

Session Protocol

Sessino protocols are protocols that run a single session. The following session protocols are available:

protocol (abbreviated)	full name	short description
SAOP	Stacked Alternating Offers Protocol	Parties are given turns in a round-robin order. When a party has the turn, it can accept, offer, or end negotiation. A deal is reached if all parties accept an offer.
SHAOP	Stacked Human Alternating Offers Protocol	Similar to SAOP. Instead of parties, we now have a list of party-pairs [shaop-party","cob-party"]| These pairs run in round-robin order. The shaop-party is the main party that gets the turn. As with SAOP, it can accept, offer, or end the negotiation. The SHAOP party can also do an ElicitCompare action at any time, also when it does not have the turn. The COB party receives it and can respond with a Compare action.
AMOP	Alternating Multiple Offers Protocol	All active parties put an offer on the table. Then all parties place a conditional vote on the offers on the table. The largest agreements are determined in these votes, and parties that agreed are done. Remaining active parties repeat teh loop
MOPAC	Multiple Offers Partial Consensus	All active parties receive a YourTurn after which they put an offer on the table. Then everyone receives a Voting message containing all offers on the table. Now all parties place a conditional vote on the offers. All parties receive these conditional votes in the Opt-In message. The parties must now all place their votes again, but they can extend their votes by adding new ones or extending the previous conditions. A #VotingEvaluator is now called to determine the agreements from the last votes, and to determine if the negotiation is complete.
Learn	Learning phase	All parties receive a Settings object. with a LEARN protocol. Additonally they receive the parameters "persistentstate" and "negotiationdata". Refer to LearnSettings on how to use these. They can immediately start learning, respecting the deadline in the progress field. When done they should send a LearningDone action.

The Learn protocol is special, it does not really run a negotiation. Instead, parties can learn during the time of this session. Then can not do any actions apart from saying that they finished the learning.

Session Result

All SessionStates have a getResult function that returns a SessionResult. The SessionResult is usually used after a session ends, to collect final synopsis, containing the final utilities, errors and penalties for each party. Generally, the SessionResult contains the agreement bids of the parties that reached an agreement. Not all participating parties may reach an agreement. It also contains penalties, which are double values.

THere is a conventional way to compute the "final utility" of a session. These conventions are often computed in a post-processing step, to rate the performance of a party with a single number. Check the #LogConverter. . This can be applied only if the profile used for that party is a publicy available utility space. In that case, the final utility is usually computed like this:

• if the party did reach an agreement:
  • the utility of the agreement, minus the penalty value if there is one
• otherwise (party did not reach an agreement)
  • if the utilityspace contains a reservation bid: the utility of the reservation bid
  • otherwise (no reservation bid): 0.

This computation is not part of the SessionResult but must be computed separately.

Protocol Party Parameters

The protocol party parameters are parameters that can be used to configure the protocol and parties. These parameters are included as parameters for each party. It's the responsibility of the session/tournament configurator to ensure all parties receive the proper parameters.

There are parameters that can be used in all protocols:

Parameter	Contents	meaning
persistentstate	a FileLocation	file in which a party can store data that is persistent over sessions
negotiationdata	list of FileLocation	In non-LEARN sessions, this usually contains a single FileLocation. parties can write data here. In LEARN sessions, parties get back the FileLocation's they received earlier (and where they wrote data), and now they can try to learn.

See also the section on using system resources.

Some protocols use the party parameters to set some behaviour. This way per-party protocol adjustments can be made. These parameters are also seen by the party so that it can adapt its behaviour accordingly.

Protocol	parameters
SAOP	-
MOPAC	power: the power of the party. Used to evaluate votings. Default=minimum=1
AMOP	minVotes: the minimum 'power' (in AMOP, power represents number of votes) for votes.
SHAOP	-

More details are in the protocol javadocs.

NegoSettings

All protocols start with a description of the details of the protocol to be run: which parties, which profiles should they use, what is the deadline, etc. This description is the protocol/src/main/java/geniusweb/protocol/NegoSettings.java​ class.

The matching protocol can then be generated from the settings with the getProtocol function, but usually this is done for you by the runserver or simplerunner.

We discuss a few common NegoSettings in more detail, with some examples. You usually don't create these by hand because they are generated for you by the GUI interface; but you do need to create them if you want to run a session programmatically.

Typically the session settings looks like this:

{"SAOPSettings": {
  "participants":[
    {"party":{"partyref":"http://party1","parameters":{}},"profile":"ws://profile1"},
    {"party":{"partyref","http://party2","parameters":{}},"profile":"ws://profile2"}],
  "deadline":{"deadlinetime":{"durationms":100}}
}}

The "SAOPSettings" indicates that these settings are SAOPSettings and (see Settings.getProtocol) will be interpreted by the SAOP protocol.

The participants is a list with PartyWithProfile items: a "party" field containing a http address on a partiesserver, and a "profile" field containing a websocket address on a profilesserver.

The deadline contains the deadline for the SAOP, which is how long the negotiation can last.

For different protocols, the contents will differ.

For MOPAC, there is an additional field 'votingevaluator' containing the voting evaluator, eg like this

{"MOPACSettings":{
  "participants":[
    {"party":{"partyref":"http://party1","parameters":{}},"profile":"http://profile1"},
    {"party":{"partyref":"http://party2","parameters":{}},"profile":"http://profile2"}],
  "deadline":{"deadlinetime":{"durationms":100}},
  "votingevaluator":{"LargestAgreement":{}}}}

For a SHAOP configuration, the settings typically look like this

{"SHAOPSettings":{
  "participants":[
      { "shaop":{"party":{"partyref":"party1","parameters":{}},"profile":"profile1"},
        "cob":{"party":{"partyref":"party2","parameters":{}},"profile":"profile1"}
      },
      { "shaop":{"party":{"partyref":"party3","parameters":{}},"profile":"profile1"},
        "cob":{"party":{"partyref":"party4","parameters":{}},"profile":"profile1"}
      }
    ],
  "deadline":{"deadlinerounds":{"rounds":30, "durationms":1000}}
}}

This is similar to SAOP, but instead of just parties we have party tuples "cob","shaop" (see the party behaviours). The party in the "cob" field must follow the cob behaviour, the one with "shaop" a shaop or saop behaviour. The SHAOP party gets the turn first. If it does a normal SAOP action, the turn goes to the next SHAOP party. But if it does a ElicitComparison action, then the turn remains with the SHAOP party (it will not get another YourTurn). The SHAOP party should resume actions when it receives the inform with the Comparison back from the COB party.

We strongly recommend using a ROUNDS deadline and a small number of rounds for two reasons

• Humans will get tired of comparing bids pretty quickly. There seems no point in using this protocol for large number of comparisons
• The log files will become huge if you run this a large, say thousands of rounds, because Comparison are all logged and these are large objects. The run server may even run out of memory on writing log file.

The SHAOP protocol can also use parties with the SAOP behaviour. SAOP parties just never call the COB party. The SHAOP protocol still requires you to enter a COB party but this party will never be called.

For a tournament, the NegoSettings typically look like this:

{"AllPermutationsSettings": {
	"teams": [
		{"Team": [{
			"partyref": "classpath:geniusweb.exampleparties.simpleshaop.ShaopParty",
			"parameters": {	}
		},{	"partyref": "classpath:geniusweb.exampleparties.comparebids.CompareBids",
			"parameters": {	}
		}]
		},
		{"Team": [{
			"partyref": "classpath:geniusweb.exampleparties.randomparty.RandomParty",
			"parameters": {	}
		},{	"partyref": "classpath:geniusweb.exampleparties.comparebids.CompareBids",
			"parameters": {
		}}]
		}
	],
	"reuseTeams": false,
	"profileslists": [
		{"ProfileList": [
			"file:src/test/resources/jobs/jobs1partial.json?partial=10",
			"file:src/test/resources/jobs/jobs1partial.json"
			]},
		{ "ProfileList": [
			"file:src/test/resources/jobs/jobs2.json?partial=15",
			"file:src/test/resources/jobs/jobs2.json"
			]
		}
	],
	"teamsPerSession": 2,
	"sessionsettings": {
		"SHAOPSettings": {
			"participants": [ ],
			"deadline": { "deadlinerounds": { "rounds": 10, "durationms": 10000 }
	}	}	},
	"numberTournaments":1

}
}

'teams' is a list of Team objects. Must contain at least <teamsPerSession> elements. The teamsize must match the protocol: (SAOP:1, SHAOP:2). A Team is a group of parties, each with their own parameters. Each will be coupled to a {@link ProfileList} in the generation phase of the protocol. The first team member is the team master, only he can do the bidding on the team's behalf. In SAOP, there is only 1 team member, the main party, while in the SHAOP protocol the first element is the SHAOP party and the second team member the COB party.

The profileslist is a list of list of ProfileRefs. Each list of ProfileRefs has exactly 1 profile for each team member, in the same order as the Teams.

If reuseTeams is set to to false, teams are drawn from the list without return. If it is set to true, teams are drawn with return (meaning all teams can occur multiple times in each session)

teamsPerSession sets the number of teams (and matching profiles) for each session. Profiles are always drawn without return (never appear twice in a session)

sessionsettings contains basically all the normal run-sessionsettings. This is used as a "template" for all sessions of the tournament. You can put any use any session setting here, and each session will be run according to the protocol you select here. In the example we use the SAOP protocol which takes participants and deadline as arguments, as discussed above. The participants list this time is empty, the AllPermutationsProtocol adds the the required parties to this list. So if you provide a non-empty list here, then these parties would be present in every session in the tournament.

numberTournaments is the number of times the tournametn is run in its entirity. This must be >0.

In a TournamentWithLearning, there is an additional learnSettings field, containing the LearnSettings. All parties must be provided a parameter persistentstate holding a FileLocation (UUID). You may want to re-use previously used UUIDs if you want to learn over multiple tournaments. The TournamentWithLearning protocol will generate negotiationdata parameters for each session. In the final Learn session, all the generated negotiationdata parameters will be collected and added to the parties as parameter.

A LearnSettings looks like this

{ "LearnSettings": {
    "participants": [
      {
        "TeamInfo": {
          "parties": [
            {
              "party": {
                "partyref": "party1",
                "parameters": {
                  "persistentstate": "6bb5f909-0079-43ac-a8ac-a31794391074",
                  "negotiationdata": [
                    "12b5f909-0079-43ac-a8ac-a31794391012"
                  ]
              } },
              "profile": "http://prof1"
      } } } }
    ],
    "deadline": {
      "deadlinetime": {
        "durationms": 10000
} } } }

Profiles are irrelevant in LearSettings because the parties should not use the profiles. Since a Learn session does not do negotiation, there are no rounds and turns and you can always use a deadlinetime..

LogConverter

The LogConverter tool adds outcome utilities to NegoState .json and files. The final NegoState is written as final outcome by the runserver and simplerunner as final outcome or "log" file. Those files do not contain utilities. The LogConverter can read such a log files. It checks the reached agreements and computes the agreement utilities by contacting the profile addresses in the log. The original profiles must be accessible (eg profile files / profile server must be available) and the profiles must contain a UtilitySpace. If profiles are not available, the tool will set utilities to 0 and print a warning.

The converter adds the computed utilities to the SessionResult object, as a dict of partyid-utility key-value pairs.

The converter can write the results to either stdout or a file, in either JSON or CSV format.

Walkthrough

As usual, download the latest logconverter jar-with-dependencies ​from the artifactory

You call the logconverter like this (download the logconverter from the artifactory, or download the sources):

java -jar logconverter-2.1.3-jar-with-dependencies.jar -s src/test/resources/APP1646925947841local.json -f CSV -o test.csv

You can also convert an entire directory, like this (make sure you create the output dir and that all files in the source dir are NegoState objects)

java -jar logconverter-2.1.3-jar-with-dependencies.jar -s src/test/resources/ -f CSV -o test

If your output is CSV format, you get a csv file with a header session,party,profile,utility and one row of data for each session result. If your output is JSON format, each SessionResult from the Session is converted to a SessionResultWithUtils, and the list of these objects is written. The logconverter adds a section "utilities" to each of the results, containing a dict with the final utility for each party. The final utility was defined in the SessionResult section.

You can directly import the CSV for statistical postprocessing, for instance using R:

R
data<-read.csv("test.csv")
aggregate(x=data$utility, by=list(data$party), FUN=mean)

Of course you can also use any software that can read CSV to analyse the results, like Microsoft Excel, Python, Mathematica etc.

Example Parties

Example parties can be found here. Many of these are also included with the basic ​parties server to provide basic functionality.

Notice, winky and agentgg were written originally written by others for the ANAC competition. We adapted them to GeniusWeb to give you some inspiration and to allow running of some old Genius parties. They were not written or modified to function as a solid basis for new parties.

Below is a table showing the currently available example parties and their properties. Notice, "Supported profile types" gives the class names of all supported types, so for instance "PartialOrdering" means all subclasses of PartialOrdering which also includes all UtilitySpaces.

Party	Protocol	Supported profile types	Parameters (default value)
RandomParty	SAOP, AMOP, MOPAC, Learn	Profile	minPower (2), maxPower (infinity). Used to control voting behaviour
RandomPyParty	SAOP	Profile	-
TimeDependentParty	SAOP, MOPAC, Learn	LinearAdditive	e (1.2) controls concession speed, minPower (1), maxPower (infinity). Used to control voting behaviour. delay (0) delays response.
Boulware	SAOP, MOPAC, Learn	LinearAdditive	minPower (1), maxPower (infinity). Used to control voting behaviour. delay (0) delays response.
Conceder	SAOP, MOPAC, Learn	LinearAdditive	minPower (1), maxPower (infinity). Used to control voting behaviour. delay (0) delays response.
Hardliner	SAOP, MOPAC, Learn	LinearAdditive	minPower (1), maxPower (infinity). Used to control voting behaviour. delay (0) delays response.
Linear	SAOP, MOPAC, Learn	LinearAdditive	minPower (1), maxPower (infinity). Used to control voting behaviour. delay (0) delays response.
agentgg	SAOP	DefaultPartialOrdering	-
winkyagent	SAOP	DefaultPartialOrdering	-
HumanGUI	SAOP	Profile
CompareBids	COB	PartialOrdering	-
SimpleSHAOP	SHAOP	DefaultPartialOrdering	elicitationcost
Boa	SAOP	LinearAdditive	"as":class.of.AcceptanceStrategy, "bs":class.of.BiddingStrategy, "om":"class.of.OpponentModel plus model-specific parameters
SimpleBoa	SAOP	LinearAdditive	-

Some parameters are shared with the protocol and thus protocol-dependent. Check the parameters for the protocol that you use.

HumanGUI party

The HumanGUI party is a party that shows a GUI to allow the user to manually interact with a negotiation. This GUI is shown on the machine where the partiesserver is running. This is also the reason that this party is not included with the default partiesserver. If you want to use this you need to download the latest version of the jar file from ​the artifactory and install it on your partiesserver.

Figure. The HumanGUI interface

Boa Party

The BOA party is a special kind of party, with pluggable components that determine the acceptability of a bid (AcceptanceStrategy), the proper next bid (BiddingStrategy) and modelers of the opponents (OpponentModel). The fully specified class path is to be provided as parameters to the BOA party. A minimal example of such a parameter set is this

"as":"geniusweb.boa.acceptancestrategy.TimeDependentAcceptanceStrategy", 
"bs":"geniusweb.boa.biddingstrategy.TimeDependentBiddingStrategy", 
"om":"geniusweb.opponentmodel.FrequencyOpponentModel",

Each of the components can also be parameterized. You just add their parameters to the list. In this example, the strategies both have parameters k and e and you just add them to the list:

"as":"geniusweb.boa.acceptancestrategy.TimeDependentAcceptanceStrategy", 
"bs":"geniusweb.boa.biddingstrategy.TimeDependentBiddingStrategy", 
"om":"geniusweb.opponentmodel.FrequencyOpponentModel",
"e":0.7, "k":0.3

So all parameters are forwarded to all components, these components will figure out themselves which of the provided ones are relevant for them. See the section #WritingaBoaParty below for more details on the components.

Writing a Party

There are many ways to create a Party: in Java, in Python, extending a Party, extending a DefaultBoa party. The following sections go into more detail.

Writing a party in Java

Example parties can be found here. You can easily clone a party with SVN using svn co https://tracinsy.ewi.tudelft.nl/pub/svn/GeniusWeb/exampleparties/randomparty/ (this clones randomparty, use a different name to fetch another example). We recommend cloning RandomParty as a start for your own party because it is a minimal example that supports a lot of protocols.

A party is compiled with maven. After compilation (mvn package) you get a target/yourparty-X.Y.Z-jar-with-dependencies.jar that can be copied into the parties server for deployment.

The basic structure of a party that supports the SAOP behaviour looks like this

public class SaopParty extends DefaultParty {
	@Override
	public void notifyChange(Inform info) {
		if (info instanceof Settings) {
			Settings settings = (Settings) info;
			this.profileint = ProfileConnectionFactory
					.create(settings.getProfile().getURI(), getReporter());
			this.me = settings.getID();
			this.progress = settings.getProgress();
		} else if (info instanceof ActionDone) {
			Action otheract = ((ActionDone) info).getAction();
			if (otheract instanceof Offer) {
				lastReceivedBid = ((Offer) otheract).getBid();
			}
		} else if (info instanceof YourTurn) {
			myTurn();
			if (progress instanceof ProgressRounds) {
				progress = ((ProgressRounds) progress).advance();
			}
		} else if (info instanceof Finished) {
			getReporter().log(Level.INFO, "Final ourcome:" + info);
		}
	}


	private void myTurn() {
		Action action;
		if (isGood(lastReceivedBid)) {
			action = new Accept(me, lastReceivedBid);
		} else {
			// for demo. Obviously full bids have higher util in general
			AllPartialBidsList bidspace = new AllPartialBidsList(
					profileint.getProfile().getDomain());
			Bid bid = null;
			for (int attempt = 0; attempt < 20 && !isGood(bid); attempt++) {
				long i = random.nextInt(bidspace.size().intValue());
				bid = bidspace.get(BigInteger.valueOf(i));
			}
			action = new Offer(me, bid);
		}
		getConnection().send(action);
	}

	private boolean isGood(Bid bid) {
		return bid != null
				&& ((LinearAdditiveUtilitySpace) profileint.getProfile())
						.getUtility(bid).doubleValue() > 0.6;
	}

	@Override
	public Capabilities getCapabilities() {
		return new Capabilities(new HashSet<>(Arrays.asList("SAOP")));
	}


	@Override
	public String getDescription() {
		return "places random bids until it can accept an offer with utility >0.6";
	}

}

The party must follow the behaviours that it promises. The example above folows the SAOP behaviour but other examples like comparebids and simpleshaop are available as example. Check #ExampleParties for which parties support which behaviours.

A party can directly use the Inform and Actions. This allows proper type checking of all the Party's code, and saves the programmer from interpreting JSON structures.

Notice, above is simplified code supporting, for fully working code check the source code​.

Throwing exceptions

A special warning is in place regarding throwing exceptions from your implementation, particularly from notifyChange. In line with the general Listener interface, exceptions are only logged and your party usually is immediately disconnected if it throws any exception. Make sure that you free up any used resources to avoid memory leaks if you really need to throw an exception.

Preparing the jar file

In order to put your party on the ​partiesserver for running, you need a jar file of your party.

Normally the party includes all dependencies. The jar files are loaded with an isolated jar class loader that should avoid collisions with possibly identically named but possibly different packages in other jar files.

Party jar files must have a Main-Class set in the MANIFEST.MF file. This main-class must implement Party and have a no-arg constructor.

The example randomparty does this from the maven build script.

We recommend to do initialization of the party only in the init() and not in the constructor or static code. This because instances of your class can be made both for extracting general info as getDescription(), or to really run your class.

Writing a party in Python2 (Jython)

We provide a python-to-java adapter so that you can easily write your party in python 2. Jython, a java-based python 2 interpreter, is used to run your party. You can check the full working example code here​. A python-based party looks like this:

class RandomParty (DefaultParty):
	def notifyChange(self, info):
		if isinstance(info, Settings) :
			self.profile = ProfileConnectionFactory.create(info.getProfile().getURI(), self.getReporter());
			self.me = info.getID()
			self.progress = info.getProgress()
		elif isinstance(info , ActionDone): 
			self.lastActor = info.getAction().getActor()
			otheract = info.getAction()
			if isinstance(otheract, Offer):
				self.lastReceivedBid = otheract.getBid()
		elif isinstance(info , YourTurn):
			self._myTurn()
			if isinstance(self.progress, ProgressRounds) :
				self.progress = self.progress.advance();



	def getCapabilities(self): # -> Capabilities
		return Capabilities(HashSet([ "SAOP"]))


	def getDescription(self):
		return "places random bids until it can accept an offer with utility >0.6. Python version"
	
	def terminate(self):
		self.profile.disconnect()

	def _myTurn(self):
		if self.lastReceivedBid != None and self.profile.getProfile().getUtility(self.lastReceivedBid).doubleValue() > 0.6:
			action = Accept(self.me, self.lastReceivedBid)
		else:
			bidspace = AllPartialBidsList(self.profile.getProfile().getDomain())
			bid = None
			for attempt in range(20):
				i = self.random.nextInt(bidspace.size()) # warning: jython implicitly converts BigInteger to long.
				bid = bidspace.get(BigInteger.valueOf(i))
				if self._isGood(bid):
					break
			action = Offer(self.me, bid);
			self.getConnection().send(action)

	def _isGood(self, bid):
		return bid != None and self.profile.getProfile().getUtility(bid).doubleValue() > 0.6;

The python party must be wrapped into a jar wrapper to get it accepted by the parties server. This is done automatically by the maven build script, again just execute mvn package to build. The javadoc with the PythonPartyAdapter​ gives the details about this wrapper.

Writing a party in C-Python 3

To write a party in C-python 3, check ​GeniusWebPython.

Writing a Boa Party

As discussed, the #BoaParty is fully configurable to use BOA components. But this adds some hassle when setting up a negotiation as all the components must be explicitly added in the parameters. Also you can not load just a custom BOA component into the runserver, the runserver only supports ready-to-run Party's so custom BOA components have to be part of a custom party. So we discuss how to create a hard-coded Boa party and how to create custom BOA components.

Hard coded Boa

You can hard code a Boa Party by extending the DefaultBoa class. You can use all the Boa components, you can add your own components, and you wire them hard into your party. An example is proviced in the simpleboa example package. SimpleBoa looks like this

public class SimpleBoa extends DefaultBoa {
	@Override
	protected Class<? extends OpponentModel> getOpponentModel(Settings settings)
			throws InstantiationFailedException {
		return FrequencyOpponentModel.class;
	}

	@Override
	protected BiddingStrategy getBiddingStrategy(Settings settings)
			throws InstantiationFailedException {
		return new TimeDependentBiddingStrategy() {
			...
		};
	}

	@Override
	protected AcceptanceStrategy getAccceptanceStrategy(Settings settings)
			throws InstantiationFailedException {
		return new TimeDependentAcceptanceStrategy() {
			...
		};
	}

}

So basically you just implement the functions that provide the opponent model, bidding strategy and acceptance strategy into the DefaultBoa party. Your jar file has to be prepared identically as with a normal party.

Custom BOA Component

To write a custom BOA component, just implement the interface of AcceptanceStrategy, BiddingStrategy or OpponentModel. Examples are available in boa/src/main/java/geniusweb/boa/acceptancestrategy boa/src/main/java/geniusweb/boa/biddingstrategy and opponentmodel/src/main/java/geniusweb/opponentmodel

Running default BoaParty with custom Components

If you only wrote custom BOA components and want to use them in the default BoaParty using parameters, proceed as follows

• Create a maven project containing your custom components
• Fix the pom references to mainClass to point to the standard BoaParty: <mainClass>geniusweb.boa.BoaParty</mainClass>
• Plug yourparty.jar file into your partyserver for use.
• Use yourparty.jar instead of boa.jar to run your components. Remember to set the Boa parameters properly using your component's paths.

Writing a party in other languages

If you want to use another language than java or python to write your parties, you have a number of options

• Make your own adapter that runs your language from Java. Check our pythonadapter​ for an example how this can be done.
• Write your own partiesserver that correctly implements the ​partiesserver interface. This boils down to creating a webserver that correctly can handle calls to a number of prescribed URLs and websockets.

System Resources, Security

The general approach in GeniusWeb is to try to run parties with as little restrictions as possible. Your party can thus access the system resources like

• creating sockets
• contacting websites
• downloading data from the web
• Create and delete files
• Starting threads
• Changing JVM settings
• Call any external libraries, through JNI or system.exec()

etc. So if the entire mschine is dedicated completely to running your party and only your party, you can feel free to hack around.

However, in most cases, such as competitions or assignments, you are not the only party on the machine. Make sure you check the competition/assignment rules before using any of the above. Additionally, crashing your machine is not a good idea anyway. Thherefore you should be careful on how you use these powers. We recommend for instance

• Respect the Party#terminate() call
• Properly free your resources after use
• If you need to write file, consider writing them in the /tmp directory
• Be thread-safe: multiple instances of your party may be running simultaneously. For instance access to a single file from multiple threads could cause a resource lock, or your file might get damaged.
• If FileLocations are provided for learning, use those instead of making your own files
• Write secure code. Particularly
  • Do not allow others to pass bad parameters settings (e.g., parameters) to your party such that your party would write to unpredictable files or directories, or worse, cause execution of arbitrary code.
  • Avoid calling system.exec() functions if possible at all

If you need to run a party written by soneome else, we recommend to run it on an isolated machine (virtual machine, docker, or even a physically isolated machine) and possibly even without any network connection. That way you can entirely dispose the party and all its side effects after running, ensuring the integrity of your other machines.

Party Parameters

A party may receive parameters to adjust its behaviour. Some of these are party-specific, check e.g. the parameters of the example parties. Other parameters may be protocol specific. For these, check the section on protocol specific party parameters.

Stand-alone Running

For stand-alone running you need to

• download the stand-alone runner, eg download from ​geniusweb artifactory select latest version simplerunner-<latestversion>-jar-with-dependencies.jar. Easiest is to clone the project with svn co https://tracinsy.ewi.tudelft.nl/pub/svn/GeniusWeb/simplerunner
• The parties you want to run (in compiled form) must be java-based (using GeniusWeb, not GeniusWebPython) and in your classpath. Typically by adding them to the pom of the stand-alone runner.
• The profiles you want to provide to the parties (alternatively you can refer to a profile on a running profile server)
• A settings.json file containing the SessionSettings eg SAOP Settings. view example file​.

A complete example is available of simplerunner here

The simplerunner writes log information, including the final state, to the stdout. The last log line normally is something like INFO:protocol ended normally: {"SAOPState": .....} . You can parse the text starting at the { using the standard jackson parser.

Limitations

SimpleRunner has a number of restrictions, compared to a run using a runserver and partyserver

• With stand-alone runner, your parties are run together in a single classloader. The main implication is that there may arise version conflicts between parties.
• You can only use GeniusWeb-based parties, not GeniusWebPython-based parties
• Stand-alone runner does NOT enforce the time deadline. Parties may continue running indefinitely and thus bog down the JVM and stalling tournaments.

Running

A stand-alone runner can now be started as follows

run geniusweb.simplerunner.NegoRunner in Eclipse with src/test/resources/settings.json as argument.

or from the command line which is a bit more complicated:

java -jar simplerunner...with-dependencies.jar src/test/resources/settings.json

NOTE: because the commandline java command can not combine jar and cp, you need to combine them manually, plus add the correct run path as in

 java -cp /blabla/simplerunner-1.4.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:/blabla/randomparty-1.4.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar geniusweb.simplerunner.NegoRunner src/test/resources/settings.json 

Also note that at least on OSX you must NOT wrap the paths to the jars in double quotes, and the separator char between the jars is :.

When the protocol is completed, the runner prints out the final state which usually contains all actions that were done as well.

With SimpleRunner GUI

If you do not provide settings, or doubleclick the simplerunner-...-jar-with-dependencies.jar, you get the GUI to enter your settings. It looks like this

It works similar to the GUI on the runserver:

• Enter the class path of your party without the leading classpath:, for example geniusweb.exampleparties.randomparty.RandomParty
• Enter the parameters as json dictionary without the enclosing curly's, eg "persistentstate": "a48b8bc9-4275-4a4e-bee9-6c0a734dc99a", "negotiationdata": []
• Enter the profile without the leading file:, eg src/test/resources/jobs/jobs2.json

Set the classpath, parameters and profile for your first party, click "Add" Then repeat for the next party, until you have all your parties. Then you can click the "Run Session" button.

Currently this GUI only supports the SAOP protocol.

Debugging

Debugging can be done in several ways: in the actual server, or using a stand-alone runner.

Debugging in the server

Notice that this method to use the debugger directly on the party as it runs on the server is a bit impractical, because of the time-out mechanisms. Any party running on the partiesserver is automatically removed after a few seconds, to ensure the server is not filling up with dead parties. Because of this, the party would disappear before you could do any debugging work. To work around this, you can halt the entire JVM as soon as possible if you take this approach.

• Use Eclipse EE (Enterprise Edition) to run the entire server, or at least the partiesserver
• Place your party source code in the Eclipse workspace
• Place a breakpoint in your party's code
• Run the partiesserver directly from Eclipse EE , in Debug mode.
• Run a session or tournament in which you want to debug your party.
• Eclipse will halt server execution and switch to debugging when it hits your breakpoint
• Be aware of the automatic time-outs that will still be enforced while you are debugging. This includes tomcat session time-outs.

Debugging with stand-alone runner

This uses the stand-alone runner to avoid negotiation time-out while you are debugging. Therefore it is slightly different from a 'real' negotiation but more convenient if the issue you want to debug is not related to a time-out.

• You can use normal Eclipse for Java developers, no EE needed
• Set up a stand-alone run as described in #Stand-aloneRunning
• Place a breakpoint in your party where you want to debug.
• Run the debug configuration
• Eclipse will halt server execution and switch to debugging when it hits your breakpoint
• time-outs may still be enforced while you are debugging but you avoid the Tomcat session time-out.
• With stand-alone runner, your parties are run together in a single classloader. This is different from running in the partiesserver.

GeniusWeb sources

downloading source code

You can browse the GeniusWeb core sources directly using the browse button at the right top of this page.

You can download the source code of this component using

svn co https://tracinsy.ewi.tudelft.nl/pub/svn/GeniusWeb/

Normal developers that write new parties do not need to install the GeniusWeb source code. Even if you want to debug/trace into the GeniusWeb code -- for instance for debugging or understanding the inner workings of geniusWeb--, IDEs like Eclipse automatically allow this as they download the source codes automatically from the maven artifactory.

Note. The first-time build process of since version 1.5.9 may be slower than previous versions. This is because the ​jcenter artifactory is closing down on may 1 , which required us to move to alternative, slower, artifactories.

Import all sources in Eclipse

To get the sources from SVN you need to install an SVN adapter. After that you can check out the sources

Installing SVN adapter

Before Eclipse 2022, Installing Subclipse using the Eclipse marketplace and using the SVNKit worked fine. However Getting SVN working in Eclipse 2022 (and above?) is tricky because SVNKit does not work with the newer java that comes with Eclipse2022 because it contains a newer java with raised security requirements and SVNKit is now considered unsafe. If you try it with SVNKit you will get an error message containing module java.base does not "opens java.lang" to unnamed module. To get around this you need to work with JavaHL which is complex to get working. The installation instructions are on ​github. Do NOT use the Eclipse marketplace because it is installing old code without the required JavaHL 14 adapter. Best follow the ​github instructions. In short (Windows users please check on github):

• install SVN 14. sudo apt install subversion
• Install JavaHL eg sudo apt-get install libsvn-java
• Figure out where javahl was installed using sudo find / -name libsvnjavahl-1.so
• Edit the eclipse.ini file to point to the javahl library. Typically this means adding one line with -Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/jni/ to the eclipse.ini file (which is in the root of your downloaded eclipse folder).
• start Eclipse
• Install subclipse using the Help/Install new Software menu. Add repository ​https://subclipse.github.io/updates/. Select the JavaHL for svn14 adapter and Subclipse. Do not select SVNKit. Do not select the "Subclipse integration for Mylyn", as it is incompatible now.
• In the SVN preferences in Eclipse, check that JavaHL is enabled.

NOTE: Uninstalling SVNKit and subclipse (or variants like subversive) seems not to work properly in Eclipse, above procedure seems to work properly best with a fresh Eclipse installation)

After this, SVN should work.

Download the sources

You can now right click in Package Explorer in Eclipse, select "Import/SVN/Checkout Projects from SVN". Enter the repo location https://tracinsy.ewi.tudelft.nl/pub/svn/GeniusWeb/. Select the root of the project, finish (selecting sub-projects will result in a stupid loop in the checkout procedure in Eclipse and won't lead anywhere...)

Right click on the checked-out project that you want eclipse to recognise as Maven project (the project are maven but Eclipse does not recognise this after check-out). Select import/maven/existing maven projects. Finish.

Downloading JavaDoc

IDE's like Eclipse download the javadocs automatically. But it is also possible to download them manually and browse them with a web browser. All modules are availabel on the ​artifactory ( you need to have cookies enabled).

• Go to the artifactory
• Select the module you need javadoc for
• Select the correct (usually the latest) version of the module
• download the *.javadoc.jar (right-click on the jar)
• unzip it, eg using your favourite archive manager or with jar xf. Don't double click it
• open the index.html

Figure. Manually downloading the javadoc from the artifactory

Migration, building old versions

This section explains how to migrate parties to newer versions of GeniusWeb, build old versions with more recent maven, etc.

Migration from GeniusWeb 1.6 to 2.0

If you want to migrate parties from GeniusWeb 1.6 to 2.0, Check Migration1.6to2

Building GeniusWeb 1.X parties

If you want to compile older GeniusWeb 1.X code (parties or core code), Check the Build1.6