simple-pub-sub

Simple pub/sub tools for the command line

This directory contains two tools pub.py and sub.py to let customers easily publish and subscribe to topics on the command line for development and testing.

How do I get started?

Publishing messages

./pub.py topic payload

Subscribing to topics

./sub.py topic1 topic2 ...

Why is this necessary?

Here are some of the questions you might have if you're asking if this is necessary

Can't we just use a normal MQTT client?

Yes, but if you do you'll need to set up certificates or recreate the temporary credential magic done here.

Can't we just use the AWS IoT test console?

Yes, but if you prefer to do things on the command line (grepping, logging to files, etc) then you have to use a local client.

Can't we just publish with aws iot-data publish ... ?

Yes, but there are some gotchas. If you try to publish the payload payload on the topic topic like this:

aws iot-data publish --topic topic --payload payload

You'll receive an error that says:

Invalid base64: "payload"

This is because the CLI expects base64 payloads. This error is helpful for longer payloads and payloads that aren't valid base64 but shorter payloads like test produce unexpected results. Running this command:

aws iot-data publish --topic topic --payload test

Will actually publish a three byte binary payload of 0xb5, 0xeb, - but not report an error.