Mainflux.mainflux/twins/README.md

Twins

Service twins is used for CRUD and update of digital twins. Twin is a semantic representation of a real world data system consisting of data producers and consumers. It stores the sequence of attribute based definitions of a system and refers to a time series of definition based states that store the system historical data.

Configuration

The service is configured using the environment variables presented in the following table. Note that any unset variables will be replaced with their default values.

Variable	Description	Default
MF_TWINS_LOG_LEVEL	Log level for twin service (debug, info, warn, error)	info
MF_TWINS_HTTP_PORT	Twins service HTTP port	9018
MF_TWINS_SERVER_CERT	Path to server certificate in PEM format
MF_TWINS_SERVER_KEY	Path to server key in PEM format
MF_JAEGER_URL	Jaeger server URL	http://jaeger:14268/api/traces
MF_TWINS_DB	Database name	mainflux
MF_TWINS_DB_HOST	Database host address	localhost
MF_TWINS_DB_PORT	Database host port	27017
MF_THINGS_STANDALONE_ID	User ID for standalone mode (no gRPC communication with users)
MF_THINGS_STANDALONE_TOKEN	User token for standalone mode that should be passed in auth header
MF_TWINS_CLIENT_TLS	Flag that indicates if TLS should be turned on	false
MF_TWINS_CA_CERTS	Path to trusted CAs in PEM format
MF_TWINS_CHANNEL_ID	Message broker notifications channel ID
MF_MESSAGE_BROKER_URL	Mainflux Message broker URL	nats://localhost:4222
MF_AUTH_GRPC_URL	Users service gRPC URL	localhost:7001
MF_AUTH_GRPC_TIMEOUT	Users service gRPC request timeout in seconds	1s
MF_TWINS_CACHE_URL	Cache database URL	redis://localhost:6379/0
MF_SEND_TELEMETRY	Send telemetry to mainflux call home server	true

Deployment

The service itself is distributed as Docker container. Check the twins service section in docker-compose to see how service is deployed.

To start the service outside of the container, execute the following shell script:

# download the latest version of the service
go get github.com/mainflux/mainflux

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/mainflux/mainflux

# compile the twins
make twins

# copy binary to bin
make install

# set the environment variables and run the service
MF_TWINS_LOG_LEVEL=[Twins log level] \
MF_TWINS_HTTP_PORT=[Service HTTP port] \
MF_TWINS_SERVER_CERT=[String path to server cert in pem format] \
MF_TWINS_SERVER_KEY=[String path to server key in pem format] \
MF_JAEGER_URL=[Jaeger server URL] \
MF_TWINS_DB=[Database name] \
MF_TWINS_DB_HOST=[Database host address] \
MF_TWINS_DB_PORT=[Database host port] \
MF_THINGS_STANDALONE_EMAIL=[User email for standalone mode (no gRPC communication with auth)] \
MF_THINGS_STANDALONE_TOKEN=[User token for standalone mode that should be passed in auth header] \
MF_TWINS_CLIENT_TLS=[Flag that indicates if TLS should be turned on] \
MF_TWINS_CA_CERTS=[Path to trusted CAs in PEM format] \
MF_TWINS_CHANNEL_ID=[Message broker notifications channel ID] \
MF_MESSAGE_BROKER_URL=[Mainflux Message broker URL] \
MF_AUTH_GRPC_URL=[Users service gRPC URL] \
MF_AUTH_GRPC_TIMEOUT=[Users service gRPC request timeout in seconds] \
MF_TWINS_CACHE_URL=[Cache database URL] \
$GOBIN/mainflux-twins

Usage

Starting twins service

The twins service publishes notifications on a Message broker subject of the format channels.<MF_TWINS_CHANNEL_ID>.messages.<twinID>.<crudOp>, where crudOp stands for the crud operation done on twin - create, update, delete or retrieve - or state - save state. In order to use twin service notifications, one must inform it - via environment variables - about the Mainflux channel used for notification publishing. You must use an already existing channel, since you cannot know in advance or set the channel ID (Mainflux does it automatically).

To set the environment variable, please go to .env file and set the following variable:

MF_TWINS_CHANNEL_ID=

with the corresponding values of the desired channel. If you are running mainflux natively, than do the same thing in the corresponding console environment.

For more information about service capabilities and its usage, please check out the API documentation.