NPO-Client

This is a proof of concept made for my diploma thesis based on my studies at TEKO Schweizerische Fachschule AG commissioned by Post CH AG. The goal was to show how an application written based on .NET Core runs as a Windows Service and in a Linux Docker Container. The application itself subscribes an MQTT topic and publishes the received messages on an Apache Kafka topic.

Prerequisites

To run the NPO-Client as a Windows Service all the following software is required. To run the NPO-Client in a Linux Docker Container only Docker is required.

• Windows 10 Version 1903
• .NET Core SDK 2.2
• Docker

To publish some messages on an MQTT topic "my/topic" and to read the messages on an Apache Kafka topic "test-topic", clients like these are helpful:

• MQTT Explorer
• Kafka Tool

Docker Compose

There are two versions of Docker Compose files.

To run all parts at once (MQTT, Apache Kafka and NPO-Client) set the docker-compose project in Visual Studio as startup project and start it or execute the following command in PowerShell:

docker-compose up

To run only MQTT and Apache Kafka execute the following command in PowerShell. This version is used to test the NPO-Client as a Windows Service or in a Linux Docker Container, independent from the Docker Compose file, for faster testing without stopping all services:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.services.yml up

Windows Service

Publish client

To register the NPO-Client the project has to be published with the following command:

dotnet publish -c Release -o "C:\Services\Release\netcoreapp2.2\publish\" -r win10-x64 --self-contained false

Register client as Windows Service

To be able to run the application as a Windows Service register it with the SC-Tool by the following command. To execute the following command, use PowerShell as administrator:

sc.exe create NPO-Client binPath="C:\Services\Release\netcoreapp2.2\publish\NPO-Client.exe --environment=Development"

Delete client from Windows Services

To remove the NPO-Client from Windows Services run the following command:

sc.exe delete NPO-Client

Linux Docker Container

Build image

To build an image from the source use the following command:

docker build -t "npoclient:latest" -f .\NPO-Client\Dockerfile .

Run image

To run a container from the previously created image use the following command:

docker run -it --name "npo_client" --network "npoclient_default" -e "DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT=Development" npoclient:latest

License

MIT licensed

Copyright (c) 2019 Roman Stocker

Please consider that some files are from the .NET Extensions project of the .NET Foundation and may have some other licenses.