44 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
44 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
## Components
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Mainflux IoT platform is comprised of the following services:
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| Service | Description |
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|:--------------------------------------------------------------------------|:------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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| [users](https://github.com/mainflux/mainflux/tree/master/users) | Manages platform's users and auth concerns |
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| [things](https://github.com/mainflux/mainflux/tree/master/things) | Manages platform's things, channels and access policies |
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| [normalizer](https://github.com/mainflux/mainflux/tree/master/normalizer) | Normalizes SenML messages and generates the "processed" messages stream |
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| [http-adapter](https://github.com/mainflux/mainflux/tree/master/http) | Provides an HTTP interface for accessing communication channels |
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| [ws-adapter](https://github.com/mainflux/mainflux/tree/master/ws) | Provides a WebSocket interface for accessing communication channels |
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## Domain model
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The platform is built around 3 main entities: **users**, **things** and **channels**.
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`User` represents the real (human) user of the system. It is represented via its
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e-mail and password, which he uses as platform access credentials in order to obtain
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an access token. Once logged into the system, user can manage his resources (i.e.
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things and channels) in CRUD fashion, and define access control policies by
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connecting them.
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`Thing` represents devices and applications connected to Mainflux. There are
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two types of "things" supported at the moment: `device` and `app`. While device
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is used to represent any physical device connected to the platform, app represents
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any 3rd party service that uses the platform for message exchange with other
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"things".
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`Channel` represents a communication channel. It serves as message topic that
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can be consumed by all of the things connected to it.
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## Messaging
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Mainflux uses [NATS](https://nats.io) as its messaging backbone, due to its
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lightweight and performant nature. You can treat its *subjects* as physical
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representation of Mainflux channels, where subject name is constructed using
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channel unique identifier.
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In general, there is no constrained put on content that is being exchanged
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through channels. However, in order to be post-processed and normalized,
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messages should be formatted using [SenML](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-core-senml-08).
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