iot-hub-csharp-csharp-process-d2c.md

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Process Azure IoT Hub device-to-cloud messages using routes (.Net) | Microsoft Docs	How to process IoT Hub device-to-cloud messages by using routes to dispatch messages to other back-end services.	iot-hub	.net	dominicbetts	timlt		5177bac9-722f-47ef-8a14-b201142ba4bc	iot-hub	csharp	article	na	na	12/12/2016	dobett

Process IoT Hub device-to-cloud messages using routes (.NET)

[!INCLUDE iot-hub-selector-process-d2c]

Introduction

Azure IoT Hub is a fully managed service that enables reliable and secure bi-directional communications between millions of devices and a solution back end. Other tutorials (Get started with IoT Hub and Send cloud-to-device messages with IoT Hub) show you how to use the basic device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device messaging functionality of IoT Hub.

This tutorial builds on the code shown in the Get started with IoT Hub tutorial, and shows you how to use message routing to dispatch device-to-cloud messages in an easy, configuration-based way. The tutorial illustrates how to isolate messages which require immediate action from the solution back end for further processing. For example, a device might send an alarm message that triggers inserting a ticket into a CRM system. By contrast, data-point messages simply feed into an analytics engine. For example, temperature telemetry from a device that is to be stored for later analysis is a data-point message.

At the end of this tutorial, you run three .NET console apps:

• SimulatedDevice, a modified version of the app created in the Get started with IoT Hub tutorial, sends data-point device-to-cloud messages every second, and interactive device-to-cloud messages every 10 seconds. This app uses the AMQP protocol to communicate with IoT Hub.
• ReadDeviceToCloudMessages which displays the non-critical telemetry sent by your simulated device app.
• ReadCriticalQueue de-queues the critical messages sent by your simulated device app from the Service Bus queue attached to the IoT hub.

Note

IoT Hub has SDK support for many device platforms and languages, including C, Java, and JavaScript. To learn how to replace the simulated device in this tutorial with a physical device, and how to connect devices to an IoT Hub, see the Azure IoT Developer Center.

To complete this tutorial, you need the following:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2015.
• An active Azure account.
  If you don't have an account, you can create a free account in just a couple of minutes.

You should have some basic knowledge of Azure Storage and Azure Service Bus.

Send interactive messages from a simulated device app

In this section, you modify the simulated device app you created in the Get started with IoT Hub tutorial to occasionally send messages that require immediate processing.

• In Visual Studio, in the SimulatedDevice project, replace the SendDeviceToCloudMessagesAsync method with the following code.

  private static async void SendDeviceToCloudMessagesAsync()
      {
          double avgWindSpeed = 10; // m/s
          Random rand = new Random();
  
          while (true)
          {
              double currentWindSpeed = avgWindSpeed + rand.NextDouble() * 4 - 2;
  
              var telemetryDataPoint = new
              {
                  deviceId = "myFirstDevice",
                  windSpeed = currentWindSpeed
              };
              var messageString = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(telemetryDataPoint);
              string levelValue;
  
              if (rand.NextDouble() > 0.7)
              {
                  messageString = "This is a critical message";
                  levelValue = "critical";
              }
              else
              {
                  levelValue = "normal";
              }
              
              var message = new Message(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(messageString));
              message.Properties.Add("level", levelValue);
              
              await deviceClient.SendEventAsync(message);
              Console.WriteLine("{0} > Sent message: {1}", DateTime.Now, messageString);
  
              await Task.Delay(1000);
          }
      }
  

  This randomly adds the property "level": "critical" to messages sent by the device, which simulates a message that requires immediate action by the solution back end. The device app passes this information in the message properties, instead of in the message body, so that IoT Hub can route the message to the proper message destination.

  [!NOTE] You can use message properties to route messages for a variety of scenarios including cold-path processing, in addition to the hot path example shown here.

  [!NOTE] For the sake of simplicity, this tutorial does not implement any retry policy. In production code, you should implement a retry policy such as exponential backoff, as suggested in the MSDN article Transient Fault Handling.

Add a queue to your IoT hub and route messages to it

In this section, you create a Service Bus queue, connect it to your IoT hub, and configure your IoT hub to send messages to the queue based on the presence of a property on the message. For more information about how to process messages from Service Bus queues, see Get started with queues.

1. Create a Service Bus queue as described in Get started with queues. The queue must be in the same subscription and region as your IoT hub. Make a note of the namespace and queue name.

2. In the Azure portal, open your IoT hub and click on Endpoints.

   

3. In the endpoints blade, click on Add at the top to add your queue to your IoT hub. Name the endpoint "CriticalQueue" and use the drop-downs to select Service Bus queue, the Service Bus namespace in which your queue resides, and the name of your queue. When you are done, click Save at the bottom.

   

4. Now click on Routes in your IoT Hub. Click on Add at the top of the blade to create a rule which routes messages to the queue you just added. Select DeviceTelemetry as the source of data. Enter level="critical" as the condition, and choose the queue you just added as an endpoint as the route endpoint. When you are done, click Save at the bottom.

   

   Make sure the fallback route is set to ON. This is the default configuration of the IoT hub.

   

Read from the queue endpoint

In this section, you read the messages from the queue endpoint.

1. In the current Visual Studio solution, create a Visual C# Windows project by using the Console Application project template. Name the project ReadCriticalQueue.

2. In Solution Explorer, right-click the ReadCriticalQueue project, and then click Manage NuGet Packages. This operation displays the NuGet Package Manager window.

3. Search for WindowsAzure.ServiceBus, click Install, and accept the terms of use. This operation downloads, installs, and adds a reference to the Azure Service Bus, with all its dependencies.

4. Add the following using statements at the top of the Program.cs file:

   using System.IO;
   using Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging;
   

5. Finally, add the following lines to the Main method. Substitute the connection string with Listen permissions for the queue:

   Console.WriteLine("Receive critical messages. Ctrl-C to exit.\n");
   var connectionString = "{service bus listen string}";
   var queueName = "{queue name}";
   
   var client = QueueClient.CreateFromConnectionString(connectionString, queueName);
   
   client.OnMessage(message =>
       {
           Stream stream = message.GetBody<Stream>();
           StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream, Encoding.ASCII);
           string s = reader.ReadToEnd();
           Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Message body: {0}", s));
       });
       
   Console.ReadLine();
   

Run the applications

Now you are ready to run the applications.

1. In Visual Studio, in Solution Explorer, right-click your solution and select Set StartUp Projects. Select Multiple startup projects, then select Start as the action for the ReadDeviceToCloudMessages, SimulatedDevice, and ReadCriticalQueue projects.

2. Press F5 to start the three console apps. The ReadDeviceToCloudMessages app has only non-critical messages sent from the SimulatedDevice application, and the ReadCriticalQueue app has only critical messages.

   

Next steps

In this tutorial, you learned how to reliably dispatch device-to-cloud messages by using the message routing functionality of IoT Hub.

The How to send cloud-to-device messages with IoT Hub shows you how to send messages to your devices from your solution back end.

To see examples of complete end-to-end solutions that use IoT Hub, see Azure IoT Suite.

To learn more about developing solutions with IoT Hub, see the IoT Hub developer guide.

To learn more about message routing in IoT Hub, see Send and receive messages with IoT Hub.