njh/mqtt-http-bridge

MQTT to HTTP bridge

mqtt-http-bridge.rb

This simple web application provides a bridge between HTTP and MQTT using a RESTish interface. It is possible to GET, POST, PUT and DELETE retained messages on a remote MQTT server.

Getting started

Install bundler:

sudo gem install bundler

Install the other gem dependencies:

bundle install

Run the local web server:

bundle exec rackup -p 1234

You can then open the bridge in your browser:

http://localhost:1234/

To connect to your own MQTT server:

Edit the first few lines of `mqtt-http-bridge.rb` to match your server.

If you want to use a different port than the default 1883, add `:remote_port => [PORT NUMBER],` under the line with the IP address. Do not put the port number in quotation marks.

Examples using curl

To get a retained value for a topic:

curl http://localhost:1234/test

To publish to a topic (retained):

curl -X PUT --data-binary "Hello World" http://localhost:1234/test

To publish to a topic (non-retained):

curl -X POST --data-binary "Hello World" http://localhost:1234/test

To delete the retained value for a topic:

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:1234/test

License

The ruby mqtt-http-bridge is licensed under the terms of the MIT license. See the file LICENSE for details.

Contact

• Author: Nicholas J Humfrey
• Twitter: @njh
• Home Page: http://www.aelius.com/njh/

mqtt-http-bridge's Issues

Externalise config

It's not very friendly to have to edit the broker name in the main Ruby code...

Fix for topic names beginning with a slash

Topic names probably shouldn't begin with a slash, but people do and they come first:

http://test-mosquitto.herokuapp.com/%2Fdevices%2FBCG521%2Fcontrols%2FCoreTemp

They 404 and I'm not quire sure why.

Occasional crash due to protocol error?

Suspect this is either network or ruby-mqtt related

$  rackup
>> Thin web server (v1.5.0 codename Knife)
>> Maximum connections set to 1024
>> Listening on 0.0.0.0:9292, CTRL+C to stop
127.0.0.1 - - [20/Jun/2013 16:46:33] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 12547 1.3553
127.0.0.1 - - [20/Jun/2013 16:46:35] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 25 1.2055

... after a short period

/Users/andyp/Development/github/mqtt-http-bridge/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mqtt-0.0.9/lib/mqtt/packet.rb:238:in `read_byte': MQTT::ProtocolException (MQTT::ProtocolException)
    from /Users/andyp/Development/github/mqtt-http-bridge/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mqtt-0.0.9/lib/mqtt/packet.rb:21:in `read'
    from /Users/andyp/Development/github/mqtt-http-bridge/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mqtt-0.0.9/lib/mqtt/client.rb:280:in `receive_packet'
    from /Users/andyp/Development/github/mqtt-http-bridge/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mqtt-0.0.9/lib/mqtt/client.rb:151:in `block (2 levels) in connect'
    from /Users/andyp/Development/github/mqtt-http-bridge/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mqtt-0.0.9/lib/mqtt/client.rb:151:in `loop'
    from /Users/andyp/Development/github/mqtt-http-bridge/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mqtt-0.0.9/lib/mqtt/client.rb:151:in `block in connect'

Seems to be non-deterministic and random. Seen both locally running on OS X, and also on cloud deployed bridge.

Doesn't seem to like white space in the topic

For example, http://test-mosquitto.heroku.com/$SYS/broker/bytes/per%20second/sent returns "No retained data on topic".

Responsive web design

Use e.g. Bootstrap or something to make the pages scale more nicely across devices

(pull request coming)

Only works on localhost

Hey. I'm trying to get this to work from anywhere, but it only works from localhost, otherwise, I get a "connection refused". What do I need to change?

Installing Error

When i tried to run ruby install i am getting the following error:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/dependency.rb:247:in to_specs': Could not find bundler (>= 0) amongst [] (Gem::LoadError) from /usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/dependency.rb:256:into_spec'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems.rb:1231:in gem' from /usr/local/bin/bundle:18:in

'

What is the problem?

not sure how to use this bridge

I installed this mqtt-http-bridge in accordance to the "Getting Started" write up and then continued to try out the examples using cURL. What I do not understand is that using curl, I'm directly publishing HTTP requests and when I open the localhost window, I see the general topics.

When I PUT posts to localhost:80/test, it shows up on the bundle exec rackup -p 80 command window as "PUT /test TTP/1.1" 200 1.251, which is just fine. But nothing changes in the /test file of my localhost:80.

My main question is how is this bridging from HTTP to MQTT and vice versa? How do I publish/subscribe from my mosquitto broker and use this bridge for HTTP requests?
I'm a newbie to the internet protocol area, and while it is fascinating, I find myself very confused. Please help me out!

Fails to handle broker outage (or wrong url)

If the configured MQTT broker cannot be reached (either it has been incorrectly specified host/port in the code, or it is down), then the web page returned by Ruby will print an inelegant error page.

Errno::ECONNREFUSED at /
Connection refused - connect(2)
file: client.rb location: initialize line: 127

This could be handled more gracefully.

Check against non-mosquitto brokers

Currently the code relies on the $SYS topic tree (only RSMB and mosquitto support it) for the display of the topic list http://mqtt.org/wiki/doku.php/conventions#sys

We could do a check for $SYS existing as a topic and warn that the bridge cannot list the topics otherwise.