Sending and Consuming Binary Data From EdgeX Device Services

EdgeX - Ireland Release

Overview

In this example, we will demonstrate how to send EdgeX Events and Readings that contain arbitrary binary data.

DeviceService Implementation

Device Profile

To indicate that a deviceResource represents a Binary type, the following format is used:

deviceResources:
  -
    name: "camera_snapshot"
    isHidden: false
    description: "snapshot from camera"
    properties:
        valueType: "Binary"
        readWrite: "R"
        mediaType: "image/jpeg"
deviceCommands:
  -
    name: "OnvifSnapshot"
    isHidden: false
    readWrite: "R"
    resourceOperations:
      - { deviceResource: "camera_snapshot" }

Device Service

Here is a snippet from a hypothetical Device Service's HandleReadCommands() method that produces an event that represents a JPEG image captured from a camera:

if req.DeviceResourceName == "camera_snapshot" {
  data, err := cameraClient.GetSnapshot() // returns ([]byte, error)
  check(err)

  cv, err := sdkModels.NewCommandValue(reqs[i].DeviceResourceName, common.ValueTypeBinary, data)
  check(err)

  responses[i] = cv
}

Calling Device Service Command

Querying core-metadata for the Device's Commands and DeviceName provides the following as the URL to request a reading from the snapshot command: http://localhost:59990/api/v3/device/name/camera-device/OnvifSnapshot

Unlike with non-binary Events, making a request to this URL will return an event in CBOR representation. CBOR is a representation of binary data loosely based off of the JSON data model. This Event will not be human-readable.

Parsing CBOR Encoded Events

To access the data enclosed in these Events and Readings, they will first need to be decoded from CBOR. The following is a simple Go program that reads in the CBOR response from a file containing the response from the previous HTTP request. The Go library recommended for parsing these events can be found at https://github.com/fxamacker/cbor/

package main

import (
    "io/ioutil"

    "github.com/edgexfoundry/go-mod-core-contracts/v2/dtos/requests"
    "github.com/fxamacker/cbor/v2"
)

func check(e error) {
  if e != nil {
      panic(e)
  }
}

func main() {
    // Read in our cbor data
    fileBytes, err := ioutil.ReadFile("/Users/johndoe/Desktop/image.cbor")
    check(err)

    // Decode into an EdgeX Event
    eventRequest := &requests.AddEventRequest{}
    err = cbor.Unmarshal(fileBytes, eventRequest)
    check(err)

    // Grab binary data and write to a file
    imgBytes := eventRequest.Event.Readings[0].BinaryValue
    ioutil.WriteFile("/Users/johndoe/Desktop/image.jpeg", imgBytes, 0644)
}

In the code above, the CBOR data is read into a byte array , an EdgeX Event struct is created, and cbor.Unmarshal parses the CBOR-encoded data and stores the result in the Event struct. Finally, the binary payload is written to a file from the BinaryValue field of the Reading.

This method would work as well for decoding Events off the EdgeX message bus.

Encoding Arbitrary Structures in Events

The Device SDK's NewCommandValue() function above only accepts a byte slice as binary data. Any arbitrary Go structure can be encoded in a binary reading by first encoding the structure into a byte slice using CBOR. The following illustrates this method:

// DeviceService HandleReadCommands() code:
foo := struct {
  X int
  Y int
  Z int
  Bar string
} {
  X: 7,
  Y: 3,
  Z: 100,
  Bar: "Hello world!",
}

data, err := cbor.Marshal(&foo)
check(err)

cv, err := sdkModels.NewCommandValue(reqs[i].DeviceResourceName, common.ValueTypeBinary, data)
responses[i] = cv

This code takes the anonymous struct with fields X, Y, Z, and Bar (of different types) and serializes it into a byte slice using the same cbor library, and passing the output to NewCommandValue().

When consuming these events, another level of decoding will need to take place to get the structure out of the binary payload.

func main() {
    // Read in our cbor data
    fileBytes, err := ioutil.ReadFile("/Users/johndoe/Desktop/foo.cbor")
    check(err)

    // Decode into an EdgeX Event
    eventRequest := &requests.AddEventRequest{}
    err = cbor.Unmarshal(fileBytes, eventRequest)
    check(err)

    // Decode into arbitrary type
    foo := struct {
        X   int
        Y   int
        Z   int
        Bar string
    }{}

    err = cbor.Unmarshal(eventRequest.Event.Readings[0].BinaryValue, &foo)
    check(err)
    fmt.Println(foo)
}

This code takes a command response in the same format as the previous example, but uses the cbor library to decode the CBOR data inside the EdgeX Reading's BinaryValue field.

Using this approach, an Event can be sent containing data containing an arbitrary, flexible structure. Use cases could be a Reading containing multiple images, a variable length list of integer read-outs, etc.