MQTT Protocol

Bowire discovers MQTT topics by connecting to a broker, subscribing to # for a short window (~3 seconds), and collecting every topic that publishes at least one message.

Setup

dotnet add package Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Mqtt

Standalone

bowire --url mqtt://localhost:1883

Embedded

app.MapBowire(options =>
{
    options.ServerUrls.Add("mqtt://localhost:1883");
});

Discovery

Topics are grouped by their first path segment:

  • sensors/temperature and sensors/humidity become the sensors service
  • home/lights/kitchen becomes the home service
  • Single-segment topics go into (root)

Each topic surfaces as two methods:

  • Subscribe (ServerStreaming) -- listen for messages on the topic
  • Publish (Unary) -- send a message to the topic

Payload Handling

MQTT payloads are binary. Bowire tries three strategies:

  1. JSON -- parsed and pretty-printed
  2. UTF-8 text -- displayed as plain text
  3. Binary -- hex dump with byte count

Input Fields

  • payload -- message content (JSON or text)
  • qos -- Quality of Service (0 = AtMostOnce, 1 = AtLeastOnce, 2 = ExactlyOnce)
  • retain -- whether the broker should retain the message

Broker URL Formats

  • mqtt://host:1883 (standard)
  • mqtts://host:8883 (TLS)
  • tcp://host:1883
  • host:1883 (scheme optional)
Edit this page