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MQTT protocol

MQTT is a machine-to-machine (M2M)/"Internet of Things" connectivity protocol. It was designed as an extremely lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport. For more details see http://mqtt.org/.

By design MQTT operates over TCP protocol, so an MQTTSN (For MQTT for Sensor Networks) was designed, which uses less resources and can operate over connectionless procols (such as UDP), but it requires a special gateway.

Mbed-os only allows you to create an MQTT client device, an external broker is needed for MQTT to operate. Clients can subscribe or publish to a topic, after connecting to a broker.

Build configuration

MQTT library will compile and run without any additional configuration. It is possible to configure some options with the mbed_app.json file. The example below sets up a maximum number of connection, packet size and enables QoS2 operation:

{
    "macros": {
        "MQTTCLIENT_QOS2"
    },
    "target_overrides": {
        "*": {
            "mbed-mqtt.max-connections": "5",
            "mbed-mqtt.max-packet-size": "1024"
           }
    }
}

See mbed_lib.json for all configurable options.

See test README to find out about tests-specific configuration configuration.

API and usage

Mbed-os uses Eclipse paho project emmbedded c implementation of MQTT protocol and MQTT-SN protocol.

Mbed-os supports the original paho library interface and provides its own API, which wraps around the paho library.

New API

The new API expects to receive a pointer to a configured and connected socket. This socket will be used for further communication.

For normal, non-secure operation of the MQTT a TCPSocket has to be provided.

For secure communication over TCP a TLSSocket has to be provided.

For MQTT-SN communication a UDPSocket has to be provided.

For secure MQTT-SN communication, a DTLSSocket has to be provided.

After the socket is created, an instance of class MQTTClient can be created with the pointer to the socket as an argument. The class will distinguish between MQTT and MQTT-SN operation based on the socket's type.

Example code:

#include <MQTTClientMbedOs.h>

NetworkInterface *net = NetworkInterface::get_default_instance();
TCPSocket socket;
MQTTClient client(&socket);
socket.open(net);
socket.connect(hostname, port);

The socket has to be opened and connected in order for the client to be able to interact with the broker.

Legacy API

The original paho library can be used, with mbed-os providing our own Network template arguments (see below).

To communicate over MQTT an instance of a template class MQTT::Client<Network, Timer> has to be created. mbed-os provides two Network specializations:

  • MQTTNetwork - to communicate over mbed-os's TCPSocket,

  • MQTTNetworkTLS - to communicate over mbed-os's TLSSocket.

Paho's default Timer implementation, called Countdown and available from MQTTmbed.h can be used.

The MQTT::Client constructor takes one argument which is a pointer to a successfully connected NetworkInterface.

Below is an example of how to create an instance of an MQTTClient:

#include <MQTTNetwork.h>
#include <MQTTClient.h>
#include <MQTTmbed.h> // Countdown

NetworkInterface *net = NetworkInterface::get_default_instance();
MQTTNetwork mqttNet(net);
MQTT::Client<MQTTNetwork, Countdown> client(mqttNet);
mqttNet.connect(mqtt_global::hostname, mqtt_global::port);

The MQTTNetwork has to connect to a broker, given its address and port number.

API usage

Apart from language details and different creation and initialization procedure, the APIs of both the legacy and new API are the same.

Once connected the MQTT/MQTT-SN client is able to:

  • connect to the broker, based on a filled MQTTPacket_connectData structure,
  • diconnect from the broker,
  • subscribe to a topic and register a callback function to be called whenever a new message arrives,
  • unsubscribe from a topic,
  • publish messages defined with MQTT::Message structure to a topic,
  • if no operation is required, but an MQTT connection should be kept open, the client can yield,
  • MQTTNetworkTLS requires a certificate to be set using set_root_cert() before calling connect.