Iotc-explorer NPM

iotc-explorer

Command-line interface for interacting with Azure IoT Central devices and applications.

Prerequisites

Node.js version 8.x or higher - https://nodejs.org
You will need Administrator access in IoT Central to generate an access token

Installing `iotc-explorer`

Run the following command from your command line to install:

npm install -g iotc-explorer

NOTE: You will typically need to run the install command with sudo in Unix-like environments.

Once installed, you can run iotc-explorer --help to verify everything is working and get an overview of the available commands:

$ iotc-explorer --help

iotc-explorer <command>

Commands:
  iotc-explorer config                       Manage configuration values for the CLI
  iotc-explorer get-twin <deviceId>          Get the IoT Hub device twin for a specific device
  iotc-explorer login [token]                Log in to an Azure IoT Central application
  iotc-explorer logout                       Log out of the Azure IoT Central application by clearing
                                             the saved login token
  iotc-explorer monitor-messages [deviceId]  Monitor messages being sent to a specific device (if
                                             device id is provided), or all devices

Options:
  --version  Show version number                                                           [boolean]
  --help     Show help                                                                     [boolean]

Running `iotc-explorer`

Below are some commands and common options that you can run when using iotc-explorer. To view the full set of commands and options, you can pass --help to iotc-explorer or any of its subcommands.

Login

Before you get going, you need to have an administrator of your IoT Central application to get an access token for you to use. The administrator takes the following steps:

Go to Administration/Access Tokens.
Click Generate, and enter a Token name.
Click Next, and copy the Token value.

NOTE: The token value will only be shown once, so it must be copied before closing the dialog. After closing the dialog, it will never be shown again.

You can then use that token to log in to the CLI by running:

iotc-explorer login "<Token value>"

If you would rather not have the token persisted in your shell history, you can leave the token out and instead provide it when prompted:

iotc-explorer login

Monitor Device Messages

You can watch the messages coming from either a specific device or all devices in your application using the monitor-messages command. This will start a watcher that will continuously output new messages as they come in.

To watch all devices in your application, run the following command:

iotc-explorer monitor-messages

To watch a specific device, just add the Device ID to the end of the command:

iotc-explorer monitor-messages <your-device-id>

You can also have the command output a more machine-friendly format by adding the --raw option to the command:

iotc-explorer monitor-messages --raw

You can also turn off colored output by adding the --no-color option to the command:

iotc-explorer monitor-messages --no-color

Get Device Twin

You can use the get-twin command to get the contents of the twin for an IoT Central device. To do so, run the following command:

iotc-explorer get-twin <your-device-id>

As with monitor-messages, you can get a more machine-friendly output by passing the --raw option:

iotc-explorer get-twin <your-device-id> --raw

As with monitor-messages, you can also turn off colored output by passing the --no-color option:

iotc-explorer get-twin <your-device-id> --no-color

Config

To set, get, remove or list config settings, run the following commands:

iotc-explorer config set <key> <value>
iotc-explorer config get <key>
iotc-explorer config delete <key>
iotc-explorer config list

Allowed config values:

Config key	Config value type	Description
`log.color`	`boolean`	Default value on whether to print JSON data in colored format. Can be overwritten for an individual CLI call by setting `--color`/`--no-color` option.
`log.raw`	`boolean`	Default value on whether to print JSON data in raw format. Can be overwritten for an individual CLI call by setting `--raw`/`--no-raw` option.

Logout

To remove your saved login credentials, run the following command:

iotc-explorer logout

Contributing

Developer Setup

For your first time setup, make sure you've done the following:

Make sure you have the prerequisites installed.
Clone this repository to wherever you want to develop.
Run cd iotc-explorer to enter the repository folder.
Run npm install, then npm run build to get things configured.

Writing Code

Once you're ready to start changing code, it is recommended that you link your project to the iotc-explorer executable by running the following (may require sudo):

npm link

Now, when you run iotc-explorer, it will point to the code in your development folder. To make the executable reflect your changes as they're made, set up a watch task in a terminal window to the side:

npm run watch

Now, whenever you make edits to the code you will be able to use them by running the iotc-explorer command on your machine.

When you're ready to stop local development, you can remove your connection to the iotc-explorer executable by running the following (may require sudo):

npm unlink

Committing

This project uses the Angular commit style for generating changelogs and determining release versions. Any pull request with commits that don't follow this style will fail continuous integration. If you're not familiar with the style, you can run the following instead of the standard git commit to get a guided walkthrough to generating your commit message:

npm run commit

Releasing

When it's time to cut a new release, run the following from the repository folder. This will (1) fetch the latest updates, (2) automatically update the package version and the changelog, (3) publish the package and (4) push the changes back into the repository:

git checkout master
git pull
npm test
npm run release
git push --follow-tags
npm publish

Contributor License Agreement

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.