Create an Adapter Project

This tutorial will help you to create a new adapter project for OctoMesh. For brevity, we will assume that you have already a running OctoMesh instance as well as the octo-cli installed.

note

For a reference implementation you can check the following repository

Overview

We will execute the following steps:

1. Create a new adapter project
2. Add logging
3. Create a launch profile
4. Log-In to OctoMesh tenant

OctoMesh distinguishes between Edge and Mesh adapters. Edge adapters are designed to run (optionally) on the edge, while Mesh adapters are designed to run in the cloud only. The big difference is that Edge adapters can be deployed on devices with limited resources and communicate with the OctoMesh repositories through a MeshAdapter using the OctoMesh DistributionEventHub. Mesh adapters can be deployed in the cloud and connect directly to the OctoMesh repositories with higher bandwidth and lower latency.

Adapters are written in C# and can be run on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The adapters are built using the OctoMesh SDK. OctoMesh SDK is a .NET library that provides the necessary interfaces and classes to create adapters for OctoMesh and is available as a NuGet package for .NET Standard 2.0 and .NET 9.0.

Plug or Socket?

Adapters may be of type Plug or Socket, or both. A Socket adapter is a passive adapter that listens for incoming connections, while a Plug adapter is an active adapter that connects to a remote endpoint.

note

See Readme of the demos for the latest information to get started.

1. Create a new adapter project

Create a new .NET Core console application and add the following NuGet packages:

• Meshmakers.Octo.Sdk.Common: If you want to create an adapter that acts as an active adapter that connects to a remote endpoint.
• Meshmakers.Octo.Sdk.Common.Web: If you want to create an adapter that acts as a passive adapter that listens for incoming connections.

note

In demos the variable OctoVersion is used to define the version of the OctoMesh SDK. The version is defined in the Directory.Build.props file and used in project files.

2. Add logging

To have logging output, you can include the following configuration file (nlog.config) make sure it is copied to the output directory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<nlog xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd">
    <targets>
        <target name="coloredConsole" xsi:type="ColoredConsole" useDefaultRowHighlightingRules="false"
                layout="${longdate}|${pad:padding=5:inner=${level:uppercase=true}}|${message}${onexception:Exception information\:${exception:format=type,message,method,StackTrace:maxInnerExceptionLevel=5:innerFormat=type,message,method,StackTrace}}" >
            <highlight-row condition="level == LogLevel.Debug" foregroundColor="DarkGray" />
            <highlight-row condition="level == LogLevel.Info" foregroundColor="White" />
            <highlight-row condition="level == LogLevel.Warn" foregroundColor="Yellow" />
            <highlight-row condition="level == LogLevel.Error" foregroundColor="Red" />
            <highlight-row condition="level == LogLevel.Fatal" foregroundColor="Red" backgroundColor="White" />
        </target>
    </targets>

    <rules>
        <logger name="*" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="coloredConsole"/>
    </rules>
</nlog>

note

Be aware of writing logs to the file system in a production environment. This is just for demonstration purposes. Writing log files to the file system can be fill the remaining disk space.

3. Create a launch profile

To start the adapter, you need to create a launch profile for the IDE. The launch profile is a JSON file that contains the necessary information to start the adapter. Rider and Visual Studio support launch profiles, for Rider see for help here.

{
  "$schema": "http://json.schemastore.org/launchsettings.json",
  "profiles": {
    "AdapterEdgeDemo": {
      "commandName": "Project",
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      }
    }
  }
}

4. Log-In to OctoMesh tenant

# login to OctoMesh
octo-cli -c Config -asu "https://localhost:5001/" -isu "https://localhost:5003/" -bsu "https://localhost:5009/" -csu "https://localhost:5015/" -tid "adaptertest"
octo-cli -c Login -i


# Create a new tenant
octo-cli -c Create -tid meshtest -db meshtest
octo-cli -c Configure -tid meshtest
octo-cli -c EnableCommunication

note

Scripts help to automate the process above. See as a reference to the PowerShell scripts in the demo repository.