iotivity-node

Description

This project provides a Javascript API for OCF functionality. The API follows a maintained specification and is implemented as a native addon using iotivity as its backend.

Build status

Installation

For the impatient:

0. Make sure node is up and running

1. Install the following packages, which your distribution should provide: 0. unzip, scons, wget, git, patch, tar, and make 0. Development headers for boost, libuuid, glib2, and libcurl

    boost and libcurl are needed during the build process, but iotivity-node does not ultimately depend on either.
   

   0. A C compiler and a C++ compiler

2. Run npm install

Alternatively, there's a video showing how to prepare a pristine Fedora 23 Cloud image for iotivity-node.

iotivity-node provides two interfaces: The low-level interface is a close mapping of the iotivity C API.

var iotivity = require( "iotivity-node/lowlevel" );

will give you access to the low-level interface.

There is also a high-level interface which implements the JS API spec. This interface requires the Promise object which is only available starting node.js 4.0.

var device = require( "iotivity-node" )();

will give you an instance of OicDevice as described in the JS API spec.

In more detail:

iotivity-node depends on iotivity proper. It has been tested against 1.1.1 on Linux. iotivity depends on development headers for libuuid and boost.

iotivity-node requires a compiler that implements the C++11 standard.

During compilation, iotivity-node downloads iotivity from its git repository, builds it, and links against it. If you wish to build iotivity separately, set the environment variable OCTBSTACK_CFLAGS to contain the compiler arguments necessary for building against iotivity, and also set the environment variable OCTBSTACK_LIBS to contain the linker arguments necessary for linking against iotivity. If both variables are set to non-empty values, iotivity-node will skip the step of downloading and building iotivity from sources. If you choose to build iotivity separately, you can use the following procedure, which is known to work on Linux:

0. Grab a snapshot of iotivity from its git repository and unpack it locally.

1. Make sure a compiler, make, scons (a build tool), and the headers for the above-mentioned library dependencies (boost and libuuid) are installed. Your distribution should provide all these tools and libraries.

2. cd iotivity

3. scons has the concept of targets just like make. You can get a list of targets contained in the iotivity repository, as well as a listing of recognized build flags via scons --help. The only target you need for the node.js bindings is liboctbstack. Thus, run scons liboctbstack to build this target.

   On OSX you need more targets than just liboctbstack because on that platform iotivity does not build liboctbstack as a shared library, but rather as an archive. Thus, you need to build all targets that correspond to archives that go into the Linux liboctbstack shared library:

   • libconnectivity_abstraction
   • libcoap
   • c_common
   • libocsrm

4. Now that iotivity is built, clone this repository, and change directory into it.

5. Set the following environment variables:

   • OCTBSTACK_CFLAGS - this should contain the compiler flags for locating the iotivity include files. For example, the value of this variables can be -I/home/nix/iot/iotivity/resource/csdk/stack/include.
   • OCTBSTACK_LIBS - this should contain the linker flags necessary for locating liboctbstack.so both at compile time and at runtime. Its value can be as simple as -loctbstack if liboctbstack is in /usr/lib, but may need to be as complex as -L/home/nix/iot/iotivity/out/linux/x86/release -loctbstack -Wl,-rpath=/home/nix/iot/iotivity/out/linux/x86/release if liboctbstack.so is located on an unusual path.

6. Run npm install with these environment variables set.

Alternatively, you can use some rudimentary install scripts for both iotivity and this repository. Using them will help you avoid having to set the environment variables OCTBSTACK_CFLAGS and OCTBSTACK_LIBS, because the scripts will supply them to the build process.

0. Grab install.sh and octbstack.pc.in and place them in the root of the iotivity repository.

1. As root, change directory to the iotivity repository and run ./install.sh. The script recognizes the following environment variables: 0. PREFIX is set to /usr by default 0. DESTDIR is unset. 0. INSTALL_PC is unset. Setting it to true will cause install.sh to also copy the file octbstack.pc into ${DESTDIR}/${PREFIX}/lib/pkgconfig. 0. SOURCE is set to the present working directory by default.

   Use PREFIX to install to a location other than /usr and use DESTDIR to set an additional prefix where to put the files. This latter option is especially useful for packaging. Examples:

   PREFIX=/usr/local ./install.sh will install the files into /usr/local instead.

   PREFIX=/usr/local DESTDIR=/home/username/iotivity-installation ./install.sh will install the files into /home/username/iotivity-installation/usr/local, but will configure liboctbstack to work when loaded from /usr/local.

   Use SOURCE if the install.sh script is not located in the root of the iotivity repository to indicate the absolute path to the root of the iotivity repository. Note that if you also wish to distribute the octbstack.pc file, you need to copy octbstack.pc.in from the root of this repository to the root of the iotivity repository first.

2. After having installed iotivity using the above script, you can run ./dist.sh from the root of this repository without first having to set any environment variables. The script will grab the environment via pkg-config from the file installed above, and will build, test, and create a directory structure under dist/ which is suitable for deployment on a target device. See ./dist.sh --help for more options.

Placing the binaries onto a device

The distribution scripts dist.sh and install.sh when used together make it easy to create a binary tarball which can be unpacked into the root directory of a device:

0. Change directory to the root of the iotivity repository and run DESTDIR=/tmp/iotivity-installation ./install.sh
1. mkdir -p /tmp/iotivity-installation/usr/lib/node_modules
2. Change directory to the root of the iotivity-node repository.
3. ./dist.sh
4. cd dist
5. cp -a iotivity /tmp/iotivity-installation/usr/lib/node_modules
6. cd /tmp/iotivity-installation
7. rm -rf usr/include usr/lib/pkgconfig
8. tar cvjf iotivity.bin.tar.bz2 *

You can now transfer iotivity.bin.tar.bz2 to the device and then unpack it into the root directory.

Persistence

The high-level JS API provides a means for persisting the device ID across instantiations of a process according to the iotivity wiki. It does so by creating a directory ${HOME}/.iotivity-node. Thereunder, it creates directories whose name is the sha256 checksum of the absolute path of the given script. Thus, if you write a script located in /home/user/myscript.js that uses the high-level JS API, its persistent state will be stored in the directory

/home/user/.iotivity-node/1abfb1b70eaa1ccc17a42990723b153a0d4b913a8b15161f8043411fc7f24fb1

in a file named oic_svr_db.json. The file initially contains enough information to persist the device ID used whenever you run /home/user/myscript.js. You can add more information to the file in accordance with the iotivity wiki.

Examples

The JavaScript examples are located in js/ and come in pairs of one client and one server, each illustrating a basic aspect of iotivity. To run them, open two terminals and change directory to the root of the iotivity-node repository in both. Always launch the server before the client. For example, in one terminal you can run node js/server.discoverable.js and in the other terminal you can run node js/client.discovery.js.

Make sure no firewall is running (or one is properly configured to allow iotivity-related traffic) on the machine(s) where these applications are running.