NATS Protocol

Bowire's NATS plugin connects to any nats:// server over the official NATS.Net 2.x client and discovers the surface from three sources running on the same connection: passive subject sampling on the > wildcard, JetStream stream enumeration (when -js is on), and the Services API ($SRV.PING broadcast).

Setup

In-tree plugin — no separate install needed.

Standalone

bowire --url nats://localhost:4222

Embedded

app.MapBowire(options =>
{
    options.ServerUrls.Add("nats://localhost:4222");
});

URL shapes

nats://host:4222          # core
tls://host:4443           # TLS
ws://host:8080            # WebSocket transport
wss://host:8443           # WebSocket over TLS
host[:port]               # bare; scheme defaults to nats://

Discovery

Three sources, each best-effort (a failure in one doesn't kill the others):

  1. Subject sampling — subscribe to > for a short window (default 3 s, configurable via the scanDuration setting), group observed subjects by first-token prefix into services. Each subject becomes three methods:
    • Publish (Unary)
    • Subscribe (ServerStreaming) — accepts a queue_group metadata key for NATS-side load-balanced fan-out
    • Request (Unary) — req/reply with inbox replies
  2. JetStream streams — INatsJSContext.ListStreamsAsync enumerates streams; each becomes a JetStream:<name> service with info (Unary), consume (ServerStreaming via ordered consumer), and one JS-acked publish per filtered subject.
  3. Services API — $SRV.PING broadcast collects responding service names; a follow-up $SRV.INFO.<name> request parses the endpoint list and exposes each endpoint as a req/reply method.

Payload Handling

Same JSON → UTF-8 → hex fallback chain Bowire uses for MQTT.

Settings

  • autoInterpretJson (bool, default true) — parse JSON payloads for structured display
  • scanDuration (number, default 3) — subject-scan window in seconds

Sample

A docker-compose NATS broker (with JetStream) lives at samples/Nats — docker compose up, point Bowire at nats://localhost:4222.

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