Skip to content

Allow definition of custom network interfaces #921

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
wants to merge 4 commits into
base: master
Choose a base branch
from

Conversation

moritz89
Copy link
Contributor

@moritz89 moritz89 commented Dec 15, 2024

Why:

  • Allow user-defined network interfaces to switch been WiFi and mobile modems during run-time
  • Allow custom classes to be used as the network, ssl and server classes

This change addresses the need by:

  • Creating a new custom WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_TYPE that expects the user to set network classes
    • WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_CLASS
    • WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_SSL_CLASS
    • WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_SERVER_CLASS

Related issues: #779 #910

@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

moritz89 commented Dec 15, 2024

An open questions are:

  1. which number should be chosen as the NETWORK_CUSTOM define? The next number (10) or something like 99 or 255?
  2. Is NETWORK_CUSTOM the right name?

I would also like to test it with a POC class that toggles between WiFi and TinyGSM, like that published by @Naheel-Azawy : ESP32GSMNetClient before marking this MR as ready.

@Links2004
Copy link
Owner

using the next free number is fine.

not sure if setting some custom defines via compiler option will work, since WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_TYPE does also switch some code around and handles include of h files.

will be intresting to see how you solve this.
all of this would be much easier if upstream arduino did provide some interface classes for the network stuff, but thats not the case sadly.

@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

moritz89 commented Dec 16, 2024

One option I found that compiles, but isn't pretty is the following. One thing that won't work is using defines to set include paths. Looking into 1-2 other approaches.

lib/arduinoWebSockets/src/WebSockets.h

...
#elif(WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_TYPE == NETWORK_CUSTOM)
#include <../../../src/CustomNetworkClient.h>
#else
#error "no network type selected!"
#endif
...
src/CustomNetworkClient.h

#pragma once

#include <WiFi.h>

#include "managers/network_client.h"

#define SSL_AXTLS
#define WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_CLASS inamata::NetworkClient
#define WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_SSL_CLASS inamata::NetworkClient
#define WEBSOCKETS_NETWORK_SERVER_CLASS WiFiServer
src/managers/network_client.h

#pragma once

#include <Client.h>
#include <WiFiClient.h>

namespace inamata {

class NetworkClient : public Client {
 public:
  NetworkClient();
  NetworkClient(WiFiClient wifi_client);
  virtual ~NetworkClient() = default;

  int connect(IPAddress ip, uint16_t port) final;
  int connect(const char *host, uint16_t port) final;
  int connect(const char *host, uint16_t port, int32_t timeout);
  size_t write(uint8_t) final;
  size_t write(const uint8_t *buf, size_t size) final;
  size_t write(const char *str);
  int available() final;
  int read() final;
  int read(uint8_t *buf, size_t size) final;
  int peek() final;
  void flush() final;
  void stop() final;
  uint8_t connected() final;
  operator bool() final;

  void setCACert(const char *rootCA);
  void setCACertBundle(const uint8_t *bundle);
  void setInsecure();
  bool verify(const char *fingerprint, const char *domain_name);
};

}  // namespace inamata

@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

A better approach is probably to use the PIMPL approach, an interface class that implements all methods that are called on WiFiClient and WiFiClientSecure and then implement those class methods in the application code. This should be more robust than the relative import #include <../../../src/CustomNetworkClient.h> in the previous approach.

Adding the following file is the minimum to implement stub interfaces in the app source code including the WebSockets library. To keep the WiFiClientSecure behavior, an instance of it can be saved in the NetworkClient::Impl class and then called via the implemented methods (connect(), write(), ...). To connect it to TinyGSM, create an instance of that class...

#include <NetworkClient.h>

struct NetworkClient::Impl {
  ~Impl() = default;

  int a;
  bool b;
};

NetworkClient::NetworkClient() : _impl(new NetworkClient::Impl()) {}
NetworkClient::NetworkClient(WiFiClient wifi_client)
    : _impl(new NetworkClient::Impl()) {}
NetworkClient::~NetworkClient() {}

int NetworkClient::connect(IPAddress ip, uint16_t port) { return 0; }
int NetworkClient::connect(const char *host, uint16_t port) { return 0; }
int NetworkClient::connect(const char *host, uint16_t port, int32_t timeout) {
  return 0;
}
size_t NetworkClient::write(uint8_t) { return 0; }
size_t NetworkClient::write(const uint8_t *buf, size_t size) { return 0; }
size_t NetworkClient::write(const char *str) { return 0; }
int NetworkClient::available() { return 0; }
int NetworkClient::read() { return 0; }
int NetworkClient::read(uint8_t *buf, size_t size) { return 0; }
int NetworkClient::peek() { return 0; }
void NetworkClient::flush() {}
void NetworkClient::stop() {}
uint8_t NetworkClient::connected() { return 0; }
NetworkClient::operator bool() { return 0; }

void NetworkClient::setCACert(const char *rootCA) {}
void NetworkClient::setCACertBundle(const uint8_t *bundle) {}
void NetworkClient::setInsecure() {}
bool NetworkClient::verify(const char *fingerprint, const char *domain_name) {
  return false;
}

I still have to test it with a complete implementation, but it compiles and should allow enough flexibility to implement IO with both WiFi and a mobile modem (or even also Ethernet).

@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

Here is a VS Code / PlatformIO example project that uses the PIMPL approach.

CustomWebSocketClient.zip

I tried compiling it with Arduino IDE but it failed as it takes the class method implementations and creates duplicate definitions for the NetworkClient class. Also tried using a separate cpp file to implement the NetworkClient class, but that also failed.

I would argue that using a custom network interface is quite advanced anyway, so primarily targeting VS Code / PlatformIO users shouldn't be the biggest deal breaker.

moritz89 added 4 commits July 1, 2025 17:22
Why:

- Show users how to use multiple network interfaces

This change addresses the need by:

- Adding an example PIO project to use Wi-Fi and GSM/LTE
@moritz89 moritz89 marked this pull request as ready for review July 1, 2025 15:23
@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

moritz89 commented Jul 1, 2025

@Links2004 I've update the MR to include an example project. The implementation is currently being used in a production unit (ergo tested a bit) and I thought I'd back port the changes for general use.

If you find the changes useful, would be glad to work and get this merged, but I also understand that this might be a bit more niche of a use case.

@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

moritz89 commented Jul 3, 2025

I just had a look at upgrading to Arduino 3.2.1 and IDF 5.4.2 via pioarduino and found out that they included a library called NetworkClient. As no one is using namespaces, this collided and thus it would be sensible to rename the NetworkClient class to something else like CustomNetworkClient, GenericNetworkClient or AbstractNetworkClient.

@Links2004
Copy link
Owner

sounds good, I like the Idea of having a way for users to there own network interface / stack.

@moritz89
Copy link
Contributor Author

moritz89 commented Jul 4, 2025

Two open questions are, what do we name the class and do you have an idea why the UNO R4 fails to compile?

@Links2004
Copy link
Owner

Links2004 commented Jul 5, 2025

since the NetworkClient is internal to the Websocket lib it may makes sense to simple prefix it, e.g. WebSocketNetworkClient this way the change of collisions is pretty low.

@kakopappa can you take a look at the arduino:renesas_uno:unor4wifi fails? the log does not make sense to me, I only see warnings no errors.

@kakopappa
Copy link
Contributor

`

/home/runner/Arduino/libraries/arduinoWebSockets/src/WebSocketsClient.cpp: In member function 'virtual void WebSocketsClient::clientDisconnect(WSclient_t*)':
/home/runner/Arduino/libraries/arduinoWebSockets/src/WebSocketsClient.cpp:559:17: error: 'struct WSclient_t' has no member named 'ssl'
client->ssl = NULL;
^~~
`

Just saw this in the log, bit hard to see it

@Links2004
Copy link
Owner

thanks for looking,
today I learned that CTRL+F does not work for the github logs any more...
only the page build in one finds the error.

they must have implemented some lazy loading on the log page.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

3 participants