json2collectdmqtt

JSON to collectd MQTT message bridge

This project converts JSON messages like this:

Topic: sensors/data

{
	"id": "autoplant-a",
	"sensor": "temperature",
	"value": 24.48
}

...to collectd messages like this:

Topic: collectd/autoplant/sensors-a/temperature

1656608692.633:24.47

Originally, I built this for my autoplant plant monitoring project, but I'm sharing this tool here just in case it's useful to someone else.

• Current version:
• Changelog: https://github.com/sbrl/json2collectdmqtt/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

Are you using json2collectdmqtt? Please let me know that this has helped you by replying to this GitHub discussion!

System Requirements

• A recent version of Node.js (the default nodejs package in Debian distros is waaay too old)

Getting Started

First, install the command:

sudo npm install json2collectdmqtt

Windows users will need to remove the sudo there.

To run it, do this:

json2collectdmqtt --server mqtts://mqtt.example.com:8883/

Full CLI help can be found by executing it with --help:

json2collectdmqtt --help

Registering a systemd service

Normally, you'll want json2collectdmqtt to keep running forever, so the recommended way to do this is by registering a service file with your system's service manager. On most systems, that's unfortunately systemd.

An example systemd service file can be found in json2collectdmqtt.service. If you are using this exampel systemd service file, remember to edit the server address to match your server, and add any other command-line arguments you may need to it. Futhermore, create the file /etc/default/json2collectdmqtt, and put something like this in it:

MQTT_USERNAME=someusername
MQTT_PASSWORD=somepassword

Don't forget to set the permissions properly too:

sudo chmod 0660 /etc/default/json2collectdmqtt

Environment Variables

In addition to the aforementioned command-line arguments (see json2collectdmqtt --help), a number of environment variables are also supported:

Variable | Use ----------------------------|------------------------- MQTT_USERNAME | The username to sign into the MQTT server with. MQTT_PASSWORD | The password to sign into the MQTT server with. JSON2COLLECTDMQTT_ARGS | Any additional command-line arguments to parse on startup.

Note that environment variables are used for MQTT_USERNAME and MQTT_PASSWORD for security, as command-line arguments can be read by any user on the system! Just try it with htop (Linux; macOS) or the task manager (Windows) for example.

Security

If you've found a security issue, please don't open an issue. Instead, get in touch privately - e.g. via Keybase or by email (security [at sign] starbeamrainbowlabs [replace me with a dot] com), and I'll try to respond ASAP.

If you would like to encrypt any communications with me, you can find my GPG key here.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome - both issues and pull requests! Please mention in your pull request that you release your work under the MPL-2.0 (see below).

If you're feeling that way inclined, the sponsor button at the top of the page (if you're on GitHub) will take you to my Liberapay profile if you'd like to donate to say an extra thank you :-)

License

json2collectdmqtt is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The full license text is included in the LICENSE file in this repository. Tldr legal have a great summary of the license if you're interested.