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Get MQTT Broker Ready

Public MQTT Broker

If you don't need to deploy MQTT Broker locally, you can use the online public version of EMQX for quick testing;

Broker address: broker.emqx.io
Broker TCP port: 1883
Broker SSL port: 8883

Fully Managed MQTT Cloud

EMQX Cloud is a fully managed, cloud-native MQTT Messaging Service for IoT and create an MQTT Broker instantly in minutes.

Sign up EMQX Cloud for 14 days free trial

No credit card required

Self-managed MQTT Broker

If you plan to deploy a MQTT Broker running locally, we recommend you to EMQX. EMQX broker is a cloud-native, distributed MQTT Broker for IoT, powering event streaming for IoT devices at massive scale

Download EMQX locally right now

Install EMQX by using Docker:

docker run -d --name emqx -p 1883:1883 -p 8083:8083 -p 8883:8883 -p 8084:8084 -p 18083:18083 emqx/emqx

Connect

When MQTT Broker is ready, you can click + in the left menu bar to enter the main program page. If there is no data on the page, you can also directly click the new connection button on the right to quickly configure a new client connection.

mqttx-create

After entering the creation page, it is required to configure or fill in the relevant information for connecting to the client.

  1. Broker information

    When configuring the Broker information,Client ID, Host, and Port are already filled in by default. You can also modify it by yourself based on the actual Broker information. Click the refresh button to the right of Client ID to quickly generate a new Client ID.

    The drop-down box in front of Host is used to select the connection protocol, which supports mqtt: //, ws: //. If an SSL / TLS authentication connection is used, it needs to be modified to mqtts: //. , Wss: //.

    Note: When the protocol is modified, the connection port needs to be modified.

    mqttx-brokerinfo

  2. User authentication information

    If your broker has enabled user authentication, you can fill in the information of Username and Password in the configuration item.

    mqttx-user

  3. SSL/TLS

    When you need to enable SSL/TLS authentication, you only need to set the SSL/TLS configuration item in the configuration as true. The two methods,CA signed self and Self signed are provided.

    If Self signed is selected, certificate configuration can be performed. Click the folder button on the far right to select the certificates you have generated. If it is a one-way connection, you only need to select your CA File. If it is a two-way authentication, you also need to select to configure Client Certificate File and Client key file. When the option of Strict validate Certificate is enabled, a more complete certificate verification connection will be enabled. It is generally recommended to enable it when you need to test the production environment.

    mqttx-certs

  4. Advanced configuration

    In advanced configuration, you can configure Connection Timeout Duration, KeepAlive, Clean Session, Auto Reconnect, MQTT Version, etc.

  5. MQTT 5.0

    In the advanced configuration, you can select the protocol version of MQTT, including MQTT v3.1.1 and MQTT v5.0, and the default is v3.1.1. If you choose v5.0, you can also configure Session Expiry Interval, Receive Maximum and Topic Alias Maximu (optional).

    mqttx-v5

  6. Will Message

    Below the advanced configuration, you can configure the Will Message. The values of Last-Will-QoS and Last-Will-Retain are filled with 0 and False by default. When you enter the values of Last-Will-Topic and Last-Will-Payload, you can complete the configuration of Will Message.

    mqttx-willmessage

    After the configuration is complete, click the Connect button in the upper right corner to quickly create a connection and connect to MQTT Broker.

Publish and subscription

Main interface

After the connection is successful, you can enter the main interface of the connection. Click the fold button next to the connection name at the top to expand and display some basic information of the configuration. It is convenient to quickly modify several commonly used configurations of the connection. You need to disconnect when modifying, and click connect again to take effect. After each successful connection, the panel will automatically fold up. In the disconnected state, you can also click the configuration button on the right to modify more connection configurations.

mqttx-main

Add subscription

Click the New Subscription button in the lower left corner to quickly add a Topic. Each Topic can be marked with a color, which can be randomly generated or opened by the color selector. The rightmost button at the top of the subscription list can hide the subscription list to show more space on the page. After the addition is complete, click on the subscribed Topic items in the subscription list to achieve message filtering. The message view will only display the message content subscribed to the current topic. Click again to cancel the filter; You can also directly click other subscribed Topic items to view the corresponding message content. By clicking on the topic name, you can quickly copy the current topic information. When you need to send a message to this topic, you can quickly paste it into the topic input box of the message bar to modify it, and you can quickly complete the operation.

mqttx-topic

When adding Topic, you can set an alias for each Topic. This option is an optional. When the subscription is set and added, the Topic in the subscription list will be displayed as an alias, and the mouse over the Topic item, the prompt box will also display the original value of the Topic. This is very helpful when multiple Topics that need to be monitored are too long to distinguish the specific meaning of Topic.

mqttx-topic-alias

We open the dialog of the subscription topic, in the Topic input box, enter multiple Topics and use comma (,) to split, click to confirm the success of the subscription, we can see that the subscription list contains multiple Topics. for the use of the client layer alias function can also support the simultaneous setting of multiple Topics, the same use of comma separation (,).

mqttx-muti-topics

Subscribed Topics support Edit/Disable/Enable, right click on the subscribed Topic list item, in the context menu we can quickly choose to edit, disable or enable the operation. When subscribing to too many Topics, sometimes not all the Topic messages you want to receive, in order to avoid subscribing to the same Topic again, the disable function is provided, if you want to receive messages from the Topic again, just enable it again.

mqttx-edit-topic

Sending and receiving of messages

After the Topic is successfully subscribed, you can test the sending and receiving of messages. Fill in the Topic information you just subscribed to in the lower right corner of the page. You can select the values of QoS, Retain, input payload, and click the send button on the far right to send a message to the Topic you just subscribed. After sending successfully, you can immediately receive the message just sent. Note that in the message box, the right column is the sent message, and the left column is the received message. macOS users can use the command + enter shortcut to quickly send messages, and other users can use the control + enter shortcut to do that.

Through the payload option in the message bar, the messages can quickly be converted into multiple formats, such as Base64, Hex,JSON and Plaintext.

mqttx-message

So far, the test of an MQTT message is completed.

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