Restrictions

MMRC communicates through MQTT and is hence based on the basic principles of MQTT topic publication and subscription.

Topic IDs

An MQTT topic consists of one or more topic levels, separated by the slash character (/). A topic level ID MAY contain lowercase letters from a to z, numbers from 0 to 9 as well as the hyphen character (-).

A topic level ID MUST NOT start or end with a hyphen (-). The special character $ is used and reserved for MMRC attributes.

Payload

  • Every MQTT message payload MUST be sent as a UTF-8 encoded string
  • The value published as payload MUST be valid for the respective property/attribute type as per the list below

String

  • String types are limited to 268,435,456 characters
  • An empty string ("") is a valid payload

Integer

  • Integer types are UTF-8 encoded string literal representations of 64-bit signed whole numbers
  • Integers range from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (-263) to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (263-1)
  • The payload may only contain whole numbers and the negation character "-". No other characters including spaces (" ") are permitted
  • A string with just a negation sign ("-") is not a valid payload
  • An empty string ("") is not a valid payload

Float

  • Float types are UTF-8 encoded string literal representations of 64-bit signed floating point numbers
  • Floats range from 2-1074 to (2-2-52)*21023
  • The payload may only contain whole numbers, the negation character "-", the exponent character "e" or "E" and the decimal separator ".", no other characters, including spaces (" ") are permitted
  • The dot character (".") is the decimal separator (used if necessary) and may only have a single instance present in the payload
  • Representations of numeric concepts such as "NaN" (Not a Number) and "Infinity" are not a valid payload
  • A string with just a negation sign ("-") is not a valid payload
  • An empty string ("") is not a valid payload

Boolean

  • Booleans must be converted to the string literals "true" or "false"
  • Representation is case sensitive, e.g. "TRUE" or "FALSE" are not valid payloads.
  • An empty string ("") is not a valid payload

Enum

  • Enum payloads must be one of the values specified in the format definition of the property
  • Enum payloads are case sensitive, e.g. "Car" will not match a format definition of "car"
  • Payloads should have leading and trailing whitespace removed
  • An empty string ("") is not a valid payload

Color

  • Color payload validity varies depending on the property format definition of either "rgb" or "hsv"
  • Both payload types contain comma separated whole numbers of differing restricted ranges
  • The encoded string may only contain whole numbers and the comma character ",", no other characters are permitted, including spaces (" ")
  • Payloads for type "rgb" contains 3 comma separated values of numbers with a valid range between 0 and 255. e.g. 100,100,100
  • Payloads for type "hsv" contains 3 comma separated values of numbers. The first number has a range of 0 to 360, the second and third numbers have a range of 0 to 100. e.g. 300,50,75
  • An empty string ("") is not a valid payload

QoS and retained messages

The nature of the MMRC convention makes it safe about duplicate messages, so the recommended QoS for reliability is QoS 1. All messages defined in this convention MUST be sent as retained, UNLESS stated otherwise.

Last will

MQTT only allows one last will message per connection. MMRC requires a last will for the mmrc / device ID / $state attribute, see Device Lifecycle. As a consequence a new MQTT connection to the broker is required per published device.

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