coap

The Constrained Application Protocol is a RESTful web transfer protocol for resource-constrained networks and nodes. The CoAP library is an implementation in Dart providing a CoAP client, the code was initially a port from the C# .NET project CoAP.NET.

Features

CoAP over UDP RFC 7252
Observe resources RFC 7641
Block-wise transfers RFC 7959
FETCH, PATCH, and iPATCH methods RFC 8132
Extended Token Length RFC 8974
Multicast over UDP (not DTLS)
Experimental: CoAP over DTLS (using FFI)
- dtls for OpenSSL
- tinydtls for Pre-Shared Keys and Raw Public Keys
Experimental: Request proxying

Roadmap

CoAP over TCP/TLS RFC 8323

Example

FutureOr<void> main() async {
  final conf = CoapConfig();
  final uri = Uri(scheme: 'coap', host: 'coap.me', port: conf.defaultPort);
  final client = CoapClient(uri, conf);

  try {
    final response =
        await client.get('multi-format', accept: CoapMediaType.textPlain);
    print('/multi-format response payload: ${response.payloadString}');
  } on Exception catch (e) {
    print('CoAP encountered an exception: $e');
  }

  client.close();
}

For more detailed examples, see examples.

Setup

Add the dependencies in your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  coap: ^4.2.1

devDependencies:
  build_runner: ^2.1.11

Create a .yaml file containing your CoAP's configurations:
- The file name must be separated by _ and must start with coap_config
  - Example: coap_config_all. This will generate a file called CoapConfigAll that you will use in your code.
  - Example: coap_config_debug. This will generate a file called CoapConfigDebug that you will use in your code.
  - This file must contain at least the protocol version. This is a valid configuration file with all possible properties: example/config/coap_config.yaml.
Run the command that will generate the configuration class:
- Run dart pub run build_runner build in your Dart project
- Run flutter pub run build_runner build in your Flutter project After running the command above the configuration class will be generated next to the .yaml configuration file.

Considerations

Binaries for DTLS

You can provide tinydtls binaries via the plugin dart_tinydtls_libs. Alternatively, you can also download the binaries directly from the Plugin's GitHub Repository.

Likewise, if you are planning to use DTLS with OpenSSL, note that not all platforms support OpenSSL natively (iOS and Windows for example), in which case you need to ship the required binaries with your app.

Connectivity

If connectivity is lost, the CoAP client will continuously try to re-initalize the socket. The library relies heavily on futures however, which might not survive in Flutter when the app runs in the background or when the display of the device is turned off. In this case, you might need to extend the WidgetsBindingObserver class and re-initialize the CoapClient in didChangeAppLifecycleState on AppLifecycleState.resumed.