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Introduction

What is rumqtt?​

rumqtt is an opensource set of libraries written in rust-lang to implement the MQTT standard while striving to be simple, robust and performant.

CrateDescriptionversion
rumqttcA high level, easy to use mqtt clientcrates.io page
rumqttdA high performance, embeddable MQTT brokercrates.io page

Library Design​

There are two main libraries which are part of rumqtt, the client(rumqttc) and the broker(rumqttd). In this document we shall discuss the high-level design for the client library, rumqttc as described in the diagram below.

      ┌──────┐
      │Broker│
      └──┬▲──┘
         ││
      sub││pub (network)
         ││
     ┌───▼┴────┐                ┌───────────┐
     │EventLoop◄────────────────┤AsyncClient│
     └───┬─────┘                └─────▲─────┘
         └──────────────┐┌────────────┘
             .poll()    ││  - .ack()
                        ││  - .publish()
                        ││  - .subscribe()
                        ││  - .unsubscribe()
                ┌───────▼┴───────┐
                │User Application│
                └────────────────┘

The main component that interacts with the network is the EventLoop, to proceed or move a step forwards, we poll(.await) the .poll() method on the EventLoop. This includes making important decisions regarding acknowledgement of QoS 1/2 requests, receiving publishes on subscribed topics, etc. EventLoop supports communication with the broker over TCP or WebSockets, with or without TLS. If .poll() is blocked or not polled for quite some time, all requests from user and broker will fail to be processed in time and this can lead to serious problems which may even need a hard-reset.

The user application can send requests to the EventLoop through an AsyncClient to .subscribe() or .unsubscribe() from certain topics, to .publish() to a topic or if necessary(when manual_ack is enabled) to .ack() received QoS 1/2 publishes. This is made possible with the presence of a channel that forwards user requests to the EventLoop as and when they are recieved by the AsyncClient.