- Configuration
- Configuration parameters:
- loglevel
- contextBroker
- server
- authentication
- deviceRegistry
- mongodb
- iotManager
- types
- service
- subservice
- providerUrl
- iotaVersion
- dieOnUnexpectedError
- timestamp
- defaultResource
- defaultKey
- componentName
- pollingExpiration
- pollingDaemonFrequency
- multiCore
- fallbackTenant
- fallbackPath
- explicitAttrs
- defaultEntityNameConjunction
- relaxTemplateValidation
- Configuration using environment variables
- Configuration parameters:
- Logs
- Alarms
The IoT Agent node library is not a standalone product and should be added as a dependency to package.json of the
project is going to be used in. The library is published in the npm repository, so it can be added to the project by
adding the following line to the package.json file:
...
"dependencies": {
"iotagent-node-lib": "x.y.z",
}wher x.y.z is an actual version number.
As alternative, you can use the master branch as dependency. In this case, you will be using the latest version of the code but note that some instability could exist (as the code in master is work in progress until the next version is closed).
...
"dependencies": {
"iotagent-node-lib": "https://github.com/telefonicaid/iotagent-node-lib.git#master",
}In order to use the library within your own IoT Agent, you must first you require it before use:
const iotagentLib = require('iotagent-node-lib');The activate() function that starts the IoT Agent receives as single parameter with the configuration for the IoT
Agent. The Agent Console reads the same configuration from the config.js file or from the environment variables. The
configuration parameters work in the same way in both cases but the environment variables have precedence over the
config.js file. The following sections describe the configuration parameters that can be used in the IoT Agent.
These are the parameters that can be configured in the global section:
It is the minimum log level to log. May take one of the following values: DEBUG, INFO, ERROR, FATAL. E.g.: 'DEBUG'.
It configures the connection parameters to stablish a connection to the Context Broker (host and port). E.g.:
{
host: '192.168.56.101',
port: '1026'
}- If you want to use NGSI v2:
{
host: '192.168.56.101',
port: '1026',
ngsiVersion: 'v2'
}- If you want to use NGSI-LD (experimental):
{
host: '192.168.56.101',
port: '1026',
ngsiVersion: 'ld',
jsonLdContext: 'http://context.json-ld' // or ['http://context1.json-ld','http://context2.json-ld'] if you need more than one
}Where http://context.json-ld is the location of the NGSI-LD @context element which provides additional information
allowing the computer to interpret the rest of the data with more clarity and depth. Read the
JSON-LD specification for more information.
- If you want to support a "mixed" mode with both NGSI-v2 and NGSI-LD (experimental):
{
host: '192.168.56.101',
port: '1026',
ngsiVersion: 'mixed',
jsonLdContext: 'http://context.json-ld' // or ['http://context1.json-ld','http://context2.json-ld'] if you need more than one
}Under mixed mode, NGSI v2 payloads are used for context broker communications by default, but this payload may also
be switched to NGSI LD at group or device provisioning time using the ngsiVersion field in the provisioning API.
The ngsiVersion field switch may be added at either group or device level, with the device level overriding the group
setting.
This parameter is used to create the Context Server (port where the IoT Agent will be listening as a Context Provider
and base root to prefix all the paths). The port attribute is required. If no baseRoot attribute is used, '/' is
used by default. E.g.:
{
baseRoot: '/',
port: 4041
}When connected to an NGSI-LD context broker, an IoT Agent is able to indicate whether it is willing to accept null
values and also whether it is able to process the NGSI-LD datasetId metadata element. Setting these values to
false will cause the IoT Agent to return a 400 Bad Request HTTP status code explaining that the IoT Agent does not
support nulls or multi-attribute requests if they are encountered. It is also possible to pass on attribute datatypes
using @type or valueType if desired.
{
baseRoot: '/',
port: 4041,
ldSupport : {
null: true,
datasetId: true,
datatype: 'valueType'
}
}Stores the authentication data, for use in retrieving tokens for devices with a trust token (required in scenarios with
security enabled in the Context Broker side). Currently, two authentication provider are supported: keystone and
oauth2. Authentication need to be enabled by setting the field enabled to true. In keystone based
authentication, the trust associated to the device or deviceGroup is a token representing a specific user and his
rights on a given domain (i.e. combination of fiware-service and fiware-servicepath). The authentication process use
the trust delegation workflow to check if the trust provided is valid, in which case return a x-subject-token that can
be used to authenticate the request to the Context Broker. Required parameters are: the url of the keystone to be used
(alternatively host and port but if you use this combination, the IoT Agent will assume that the protocol is HTTP),
the user and password to which it is delegated the trust verification. E.g.:
{
enabled: true,
url: 'https://localhost:5000',
type: 'keystone',
user: 'iotagent',
password: 'iotagent'
}In oauth2 based authentication, two types of tokens can be used depending on the availability in the IDM to be used.
On one hand, the trust associated to the device or deviceGroup is a refresh_token issued by a specific user for
the Context Broker client. The authentication process uses the
refresh_token grant type to obtain an access_token that can be
used to authenticate the request to the Context Broker. At the time being the assumption is that the refresh_token is
a not expiring offline_token (we believe this is the best solution in the case of IoT Devices, since injecting a
refresh token look may slow down communication. Still, the developer would be able to invalidate the refresh token on
the provider side in case of security issues connected to a token). The code was tested using
Keycloak, Auth0 and FIWARE Keyrock
(it may require customisation for other providers - while OAuth2 is a standard, not all implementations behave in the
same way, especially as regards status codes and error messages). Required parameters are: the url of the OAuth 2
provider to be used (alternatively host and port but if you use this combination, the IoT Agent will assume that the
protocol is HTTP), the tokenPath to which the validation request should be sent
(/auth/realms/default/protocol/openid-connect/token for Keycloak and Auth0, /oauth2/token for Keyrock), the
clientId and clientSecret that identify the Context Broker, and the header field that should be used to send the
authentication request (that will be sent in the form Authorization: Bearer <access_token>). E.g.:
{
enabled: true,
type: 'oauth2',
url: 'http://localhost:3000',
header: 'Authorization',
clientId: 'context-broker',
clientSecret: 'c8d58d16-0a42-400e-9765-f32e154a5a9e',
tokenPath: '/auth/realms/default/protocol/openid-connect/token'
}Nevertheless, this kind of authentication relying on refresh_token grant type implies that when the acces_token
expires, it is needed to request a new one from the IDM, causing some overhead in the communication with the Context
Broker. To mitigate this issue, FIWARE KeyRock IDM implements permanent tokens that can be retrieved using
scope=permanent. With this approach, the IOTA does not need to interact with the IDM and directly include the
permanent token in the header. In order to use this type of token, an additional parameter permanentToken must be
set to true in the authentication configuration. An environment variable IOTA_AUTH_PERMANENT_TOKEN can be also
used for the same purpose. For instance:
{
type: 'oauth2',
url: 'http://localhost:3000',
header: 'Authorization',
clientId: 'context-broker',
clientSecret: '0c2492e1-3ce3-4cca-9723-e6075b89c244',
tokenPath: '/oauth2/token',
enabled: true,
permanentToken: true
}Stores type of Device Registry to create. Currently, two values are supported: memory and mongodb. If the former is
configured, a transient memory-based device registry will be used to register all the devices. This registry will be
emptied whenever the process is restarted. If the latter is selected, a MongoDB database will be used to store all the
device information, so it will be persistent from one execution to the other. Mongodb databases must be configured in
the mongob section (as described bellow). E.g.:
{
type: 'mongodb';
}It configures the MongoDB driver for those repositories with 'mongodb' type, using the uri parameter (which format is
available in this reference).
{
host: 'localhost',
port: '27017',
db: 'iotagent',
retries: 5,
retryTime: 5
}{
host: 'mongodb-0,mongodb-1,mongodb-2',
port: '27017',
db: 'iotagent',
replicaSet: 'rs0',
user: 'rootuser',
password: 'password',
authSource: 'admin',
ssl: true,
extraArgs: {
retryWrites: true,
readPreference: 'nearest',
w: 'majority'
},
retries: 5,
retryTime: 5
}This parameter configures all the information needed to register the IoT Agent in the IoTManager. If this section is
present, the IoTA will try to register to a IoTAM in the host, port and path indicated, with the information
configured in the object. The IoTAgent URL that will be reported will be the providedUrl (described below) with the
added agentPath:
{
host: 'mockediotam.com',
port: 9876,
path: '/protocols',
protocol: 'GENERIC_PROTOCOL',
description: 'A generic protocol',
agentPath: '/iot'
}This parameter includes additional groups configuration as described into the Config group API section.
Default service for the IoT Agent. If a device is being registered, and no service information comes with the device data, and no service information is configured for the given type, the default IoT agent service will be used instead. E.g.: 'smartGondor'.
default subservice for the IoT Agent. If a device is being registered, and no subservice information comes with the device data, and no subservice information is configured for the given type, the default IoT agent subservice will be used instead. E.g.: '/gardens'.
URL to send in the Context Provider registration requests. Should represent the external IP of the deployed IoT Agent (the IP where the Context Broker will redirect the NGSI requests). E.g.: 'http://192.168.56.1:4041'.
indicates the version of the IoTA that will be displayed in the about method (it should be filled automatically by each IoTA).
if this flag is activated, the IoTAgent will not capture global exception, thus dying upon any unexpected error.
if this flag is activated:
- For NGSI-v2, the IoT Agent will add a
TimeInstantmetadata attribute to all the attributes updated from device information. This flag is overwritten bytimestampflag in group or device - With NGSI-LD, the standard
observedAtproperty-of-a-property is created instead.
default string to use as resource for the registration of new config groups (if no resource is provided).
default string to use as API Key for devices that do not belong to a particular Configuration.
default string identifying the component name for this IoT Agent in the logs.
expiration time for commands waiting in the polling queue in miliseconds. If a command has been in the queue for this amount of time without being collected by the device, the expiration daemon will reclaim it. This attribute is optional (if it doesn't exist, commands won't expire).
time between collection of expired commands in milliseconds. This attribute is optional (if this parameter doesn't exist the polling daemon won't be started).
When enabled, the IoT Agents runs in multi-thread environment to take advantage of multi-core systems. It allows two
values true or false. This attribute is optional with default to false, which means that the IoTAgent runs in a
single thread. For more details about multi-core functionality, please refer to the
Cluster module in Node.js and
this section of the library documentation.
For Linked Data Context Brokers which do not support multi-tenancy, this provides an alternative mechanism for supplying
the NGSILD-Tenant header. Note that NGSILD-Tenant has not yet been included in the NGSI-LD standard (it has been
proposed for the next update of the standard, but the final decision has yet been confirmed), take into account it could
change. Note that for backwards compatibility with NGSI v2, the fiware-service header is already used as alternative
if the NGSILD-Tenant header is not supplied.
For Linked Data Context Brokers which do not support a service path, this provides an alternative mechanism for suppling
the NGSILD-Path header. Note that for backwards compatibility with NGSI v2, the fiware-servicepath header is already
used as alternative if the NGSILD-Path header is not supplied. Note that NGSILD-Path has not yet been included in the
NGSI-LD standard (it has been proposed for the next update of the standard, but the final decision has yet been
confirmed), take into account it could change
if this flag is activated, only provisioned attributes will be processed to Context Broker. This flag is overwritten by
explicitAttrs flag in group or device provision. Additionally explicitAttrs can be used to define which meassures
defined in JSON/JEXL array will be propagated to NGSI interface.
the default conjunction string used to compose a default entity_name when is not provided at device provisioning time;
in that case entity_name is composed by type + : + device_id. Default value is :. This value is overwritten by
defaultEntityNameConjunction in group provision.
if this flag is activated, objectId attributes for incoming devices are not validated, and may exceptionally include
characters (such as semi-colons) which are
forbidden according to the NGSI
specification. When provisioning devices, it is necessary that the developer provides valid objectId-name mappings
whenever relaxed mode is used, to prevent the consumption of forbidden characters.
IotAgents, as all Express applications that use the body-parser middleware, have a default limit to the request body size that the application will handle. This default limit for ioiotagnets are 1Mb. So, if your IotAgent receives a request with a body that exceeds this limit, the application will throw a “Error: Request entity too large”.
The 1Mb default can be changed setting the expressLimit configuration parameter (or equivalente IOTA_EXPRESS_LIMIT
environment variable).
If this flag is activated, last measure arrived to Device IoTAgent without be processed will be stored in Device under
lastMeasure field (composed of sub-fields timestamp and measure for the measure itself, in multi-measure format).
This flag is overwritten by storeLastMeasure flag in group or device. This flag is disabled by default.
For example in a device document stored in MongoDB will be extended with a subdocument named lastMeasure like this:
{
"lastMeasure": {
"timestamp": "2025-01-09T10:35:33.079Z",
"measure": [
[
{
"name": "level",
"type": "Text",
"value": 33
}
]
]
}
}If this flag is activated, when iotAgent invokes Context Broker will use
flowControl option.
This flag is overwritten by useCBflowControl flag in group or device. This flag is disabled by default.
Set command mode for the IoTAgent instance (it can be overriden by the cmdMode at group or device level). Possible
values are:
legacy(used as default if this setting is not defined): IoTAgent commands will use Context Broker registers mechanims.notification: IoTAgent commands will use subscriptions to be notified for Context Broker commands.advancedNotification: IoTAgent commands will use subscriptions to be notified for Context Broker commands (but in a different way as innotificationmode)
Have a look to this document for more detail on how this modes work.
Enable or not internal health check. Default false.
Time interval (in milliseconds) between consecutive health checks. Default: 20000 (20 seconds)
Maximum time (in milliseconds) to wait for a single health check operation (HTTP request, MongoDB ping, MQTT connect) before considering it failed. Default: 1500 (1.5 seconds)
Number of consecutive failed checks required before marking a connection as DOWN (ok: false). Until this threshold is reached, transient failures are tolerated. Default: 3
Consider an Http response code minor than 500 as endpoint is working. Default false, an http response code minor than 400.
Some of the configuration parameters can be overriden with environment variables, to ease the use of those parameters with container-based technologies, like Docker, Heroku, etc...
The following table shows the accepted environment variables, as well as the configuration parameter the variable overrides.
| Environment variable | Configuration attribute |
|---|---|
| IOTA_CB_URL | contextBroker.url |
| IOTA_CB_HOST | contextBroker.host |
| IOTA_CB_PORT | contextBroker.port |
| IOTA_CB_NGSI_VERSION | contextBroker.ngsiVersion |
| IOTA_NORTH_HOST | server.host |
| IOTA_NORTH_PORT | server.port |
| IOTA_LD_SUPPORT_DATA_TYPE | server.ldSupport.datatype |
| IOTA_LD_SUPPORT_NULL | server.ldSupport.null |
| IOTA_LD_SUPPORT_DATASET_ID | server.ldSupport.datasetId |
| IOTA_PROVIDER_URL | providerUrl |
| IOTA_AUTH_ENABLED | authentication.enabled |
| IOTA_AUTH_TYPE | authentication.type |
| IOTA_AUTH_HEADER | authentication.header |
| IOTA_AUTH_URL | authentication.url |
| IOTA_AUTH_HOST | authentication.host |
| IOTA_AUTH_PORT | authentication.port |
| IOTA_AUTH_USER | authentication.user |
| IOTA_AUTH_PASSWORD | authentication.password |
| IOTA_AUTH_CLIENT_ID | authentication.clientId |
| IOTA_AUTH_CLIENT_SECRET | authentication.clientSecret |
| IOTA_AUTH_TOKEN_PATH | authentication.tokenPath |
| IOTA_AUTH_PERMANENT_TOKEN | authentication.permanentToken |
| IOTA_REGISTRY_TYPE | deviceRegistry.type |
| IOTA_LOG_LEVEL | logLevel |
| IOTA_TIMESTAMP | timestamp |
| IOTA_IOTAM_URL | iotManager.url |
| IOTA_IOTAM_HOST | iotManager.host |
| IOTA_IOTAM_PORT | iotManager.port |
| IOTA_IOTAM_PATH | iotManager.path |
| IOTA_IOTAM_AGENTPATH | iotManager.agentPath |
| IOTA_IOTAM_PROTOCOL | iotManager.protocol |
| IOTA_IOTAM_DESCRIPTION | iotManager.description |
| IOTA_MONGO_URI | mongodb.uri |
| IOTA_POLLING_EXPIRATION | pollingExpiration |
| IOTA_POLLING_DAEMON_FREQ | pollingDaemonFrequency |
| IOTA_MULTI_CORE | multiCore |
| IOTA_JSON_LD_CONTEXT | jsonLdContext |
| IOTA_FALLBACK_TENANT | fallbackTenant |
| IOTA_FALLBACK_PATH | fallbackPath |
| IOTA_EXPLICIT_ATTRS | explicitAttrs |
| IOTA_DEFAULT_ENTITY_NAME_CONJUNCTION | defaultEntityNameConjunction |
| IOTA_RELAX_TEMPLATE_VALIDATION | relaxTemplateValidation |
| IOTA_EXPRESS_LIMIT | expressLimit |
| IOTA_STORE_LAST_MEASURE | storeLastMeasure |
| IOTA_CB_FLOW_CONTROL | useCBflowControl |
| IOTA_CMD_MODE | cmdMode |
| IOTA_HEALTH_CHECK | healthCheck |
| IOTA_HEALTH_CHECK_INTERVAL | healthCheckInterval |
| IOTA_HEALTH_CHECK_TIMEOUT | healthCheckTimeout |
| IOTA_HEALTH_CHECK_DOWN_AFTER_FAILS | healthCheckDownAfterFails |
| IOTA_IOTA_HEALTH_CHECK_CONSIDER_HTTP_RESPONSE_UP | healthCheckConsiderHttpResponseUp |
Note:
- If you need to pass more than one JSON-LD context, you can define the IOTA_JSON_LD_CONTEXT environment variable as a
comma separated list of contexts (e.g.
'http://context1.json-ld,http://context2.json-ld')
This section describes the logs that can be generated by the IoT Agent library. The IoT Agent library uses the following log levels:
| Level | Description |
|---|---|
DEBUG |
Used to log information useful for debugging. |
INFO |
Used to log information about the normal operation of the IoT Agent library. |
ERROR |
Used to log information about errors that may affect the IoT Agent library. |
FATAL |
Used to log information about fatal errors that may affect the IoT Agent library. |
Additionally, every error log has an associated error code that can be used to identify the error. The error codes are composed by a prefix and a number. The following table shows the prefixes used in the IoT Agent library:
| Prefix | Type of operation |
|---|---|
MONGODB |
Errors related with the MongoDB repository |
IOTAM |
Errors related with the IoTA Manager |
KEYSTONE |
Errors related with trust token retrieval |
ORION |
Errors in Context Broker access |
VALIDATION-FATAL |
Errors related with management of the Validation templates |
| Error code | Error name | Description |
|---|---|---|
GENERAL-001 |
Couldn't find callback in listDevices call. | Implies that the callback function was not found in the listDevices call. This error is thrown when the callback function is not provided in the listDevices call. |
MONGODB-001 |
Error trying to connect to MongoDB: %s | Implies there has been an error connecting with the DB. The component will automatically retry from this error, but it may be a sign of connectivity problems between the DB and the component. If the connection cannot be restablished from this error, a MONGODB-002 error will be raised. |
MONGODB-002 |
Error found after [%d] attempts: %s | Indicates that it was impossible to establish a connection to the MongoDB cluster, even after retrying N times. This could be caused by a connectivity problem with the MongoDB machine, a problem in the MongoDB cluster, or a misconfiguration of the IoTA Manager. Check the conectivity, the state of the MongoDB cluster and the Mongo configuration data. |
MONGODB-003 |
No host found for MongoDB driver. | This error will thrown if MongoDB is selected as the configured repository for data but some information is missing in the configuration file. Check the configuration file and add all the required information. |
MONGODB-004 |
MongoDB connection was lost. | Indicates that it was impossible to reestablish the connection with the MongoDB server after retrying N times. This could be caused by a connectivity problem with the MongoDB machine or by changes on the configuration of the MongoDB server done while the IoT Agent was running. This error is only thrown when using a single MongoDB instance or when using sharding but just a single mongos proxy. When using MongoDB instances using replica sets or multiple mongos servers, the IoT Agent will retry connecting forever alternating between the different nodes. |
IOTAM-001 |
Error updating information in the IOTAM. Status Code [%d] | The IoT Agent could not contact the IoT Agent manager to update its information. This condition may indicate a lack of connectivity between machines or a problem in the IoT Agent Manager. The IoT Agent information in the IoT Agent Manager will be out-of-date until this problem is solved. |
KEYSTONE-001 |
Error retrieving token from Keystone: %s | There was connection error connecting with Keystone to retrieve a token. This condition may indicate a lack of connectivity between both machines or a problem with Keystone. |
KEYSTONE-002 |
Unexpected status code: %d | There was a problem retrieving a token from keystone that was not caused by connectivity errors. Check the Keystone log for errors and the security configuration in the IoTAgent. This may also be caused by a wrong trust token used by the user. |
KEYSTONE-003 |
Token missing in the response headers. | Authentication flow worked correctly, but the response headers did not include the expected header x-subject-token. Check the Keystone logs and configuration. |
OAUTH2-001 |
Error retrieving token from OAuth2 provider: %s | There was connection error connecting with OAuth2 provider to retrieve a token. This condition may indicate a lack of connectivity between both machines or a problem with OAuth2 provider. |
OAUTH2-002 |
Unexpected status code: %d | There was a problem retrieving a token from OAuth2 provider that was not caused by connectivity errors. Check the OAuth2 provider log for errors and the security configuration in the IoTAgent. This may also be caused by an invalid refresh_token used by the user. |
OAUTH2-003 |
Token missing in the response body | The JSON response body returned by the OAuth2 provider does not include a field access_token. Check the OAuth2 logs and configuration. |
ORION-001 |
Connection error creating initial entity in the Context Broker: %s | There was a connectivity error accessing Context Broker to create an initial entity (or the Context Broker was down). Check connectivity between the machines, the status of the remote Context Broker and the configuration of the IoTAgent. |
ORION-002 |
Connection error sending registrations to the Context Broker: %s | There was a connectivity error accessing Context Broker to register the IoTA as a Context Provider (or the Context Broker was down). Check connectivity between the machines, the status of the remote Context Broker and the configuration of the IoT Agent. |
VALIDATION-FATAL-001 |
Validation Request templates not found | Validation templates were not found. Check all the validation templates are properly located in the IoTAgent Library folder and that the file permissions are correct. |
The following table shows the alarms that can be raised in the IoTAgent library. All the alarms are signaled by a error
log starting with the prefix "Raising [%s]:" (where %s is the alarm name). All the alarms are released by an info log
with the prefix "Releasing [%s]". These texts appear in the msg= field of the generic log record format.
| Alarm name | Severity | Description |
|---|---|---|
MONGO-ALARM_XX |
Critical | Indicates an error in the MongoDB connectivity |
ORION-ALARM |
Critical | Indicates a persistent error accesing the Context Broker |
IOTAM-ALARM |
Critical | Indicates a persistent error accessing the IoTAM |
while the 'Severity' criterium is as follows:
- Critical - The system is not working
- Major - The system has a problem that degrades the service and must be addressed
- Warning - It is happening something that must be notified
In order to identify the internal flow which origins a mongo alarm, there is a suffix _XX which identifies from 01
to 11 each flow.