What is a Message Bus?

A Message Bus is mechanism for independent systems to communicate with each other using a set of messages for common commands or notifiers. In the Mycroft ecosystem, the Messagebus is a websocket and the messages contain a message type with an optional JSON data packet. Some messages trigger actions and have side effects; some are simple notifiers of actions that either have occurred or are about to occur. The Messagebus connects the mycroft-core processes and the Skills, and can also be joined by outside systems such as the CLI.

See all the Message types that are currently used by the MessageBus.

Messages can be sent from the producers and acted upon by Skills or other consumers within mycroft-core. The producers and consumers listed are examples and some messages might be generated or handled by other processes or advanced Skills.

The base MycroftSkill API handles most of the Messagebus usage automatically. For example, the mycroft.stop message is caught by the skill framework, invoking an overridden MycroftSkills.stop() method within a Skill. Similarly, the MycroftSkill.speak() and MycroftSkill.speak_dialog() methods generate speak messages to be conveyed to the text-to-speech (TTS) and audio systems.

You will really only need to know about the Mycroft Messagebus if you are developing advanced Skills. The MycroftSkill.add_event() method allows you to attach a handler which will be triggered when the message is seen on the Messagebus.

NOTE: We can only currently assist you in writing Skills in Python, so if you choose to write Skills in another programming language, we may not be able to provide assistance - but we don't want to stop you doing awesome things!

MycroftSkill Interaction

Connecting Message handlers

from mycroft import MycroftSkill
​
class ListenForMessageSkill(MycroftSkill):
  def initialize(self):  
      self.add_event('recognizer_loop:record_begin',  
                    self.handle_listener_started)  
      self.add_event('recognizer_loop:record_end',  
                    self.handle_listener_ended)
​
  def handle_listener_started(self, message):  
      # code to excecute when active listening begins...
​
  def handle_listener_ended(self, message):  
      # code to excecute when active listening begins...  
​
def create_skill():
    return ListenForMessageSkill()

Generating Messages

from mycroft import MycroftSkill
from mycroft.messagebus import Message
​
class GenerateMessageSkill(MycroftSkill):
  def some_method(self):  
    self.bus.emit(Message("recognizer_loop:utterance",  
                          {'utterances': ["the injected utterance"],  
                            'lang': 'en-us'}))  
​
def create_skill():
    return GenerateMessageSkill()

Mycroft MessageBus Client

The Mycroft MessageBus Client is a Python module providing a simple interface for the Mycroft MessageBus. It can be used to connect to Mycroft, send messages, and react to messages sent by the Mycroft system.

The module is available through PyPI.org or directly on Github.

You can install it in your Mycroft Virtual Environment using:

mycroft-pip install mycroft-messagebus-client

MycroftBusClient()

The MycroftBusClient() object can be setup to connect to any host and port as well as any endpoint on that host. this makes it quite versatile and will work on the main bus as well as on a gui bus. If no arguments are provided it will try to connect to a local instance of Mycroft-core on the default endpoint and port.

Message()

The Message object is a representation of the messagebus message, this will always contain a message type but can also contain data and context. Data is usually real information while the context typically contain information on where the message originated or who the intended recipient is.

Message('MESSAGE_TYPE', data={'meaning': 42}, context={'origin': 'A.Dent'})

Sending a Message

In the following example we setup an instance of the MessageBusClient then emit a speak Message with a data payload. Mycroft would consume this Message and speak "Hello World".

from mycroft_bus_client import MessageBusClient, Message
​
print('Setting up client to connect to a local mycroft instance')
client = MessageBusClient()
client.run_in_thread()
​
print('Sending speak message...')
client.emit(Message('speak', data={'utterance': 'Hello World'}))

Listening for a Message

In the following example we setup an instance of the MessageBusClient. We then define a function print_utterance that prints the utterance from a Message. This is registered as a handler for the speak Message. Finally we call the run_forever() method to keep the client running.

If this code had run before the example above, it would catch the speak Message we emitted and print: Mycroft said "Hello World"

from mycroft_bus_client import MessageBusClient, Message
​
print('Setting up client to connect to a local mycroft instance')
client = MessageBusClient()
​
def print_utterance(message):
    print('Mycroft said "{}"'.format(message.data.get('utterance')))
​
​
print('Registering handler for speak message...')
client.on('speak', print_utterance)
​
client.run_forever()

Manually connecting to the MessageBus

Here is an example Python script to connect to the messagebus:

#! /usr/bin/env python3
​
import sys
from websocket import create_connection
uri = 'ws://' + sys.argv[1] + ':8181/core'
ws = create_connection(uri)
print("Sending " + sys.argv[2] + " to " + uri + "...")
if len(sys.argv) >= 4:
    data = sys.argv[3]
else:  
    data = "{}"
​
message = '{"type": "' + sys.argv[2] + '", "data": ' + data +'}'  
result = ws.send(message)  
print("Receiving..." )
result = ws.recv()  
print("Received '%s'" % result)
ws.close()

Unfortunately, we cannot provide support or examples for other languages.

Command Line Interaction

Generating Messages

python3 -m mycroft.messagebus.send xxx.yyy.zzz

or

python3 -m mycroft.messagebus.send xxx.yyy.zzz '{"name": "value"}'

A simple message looks like this:

python3 -m mycroft.messagebus.send speak '{"utterance" : "I am good"}'

Guidelines for Message Usage

Private messages can be placed on the Messagebus following these naming conventions: subsystem.message or skill.skillname.message

• Messages MUST use verbs for requests - such as;

  • mic.mute

  • mic.unmute

  • skill.mycrofttimer.cancel.all

• Messages MUST use the future tense for pre-action notifications - such as;

  • mic.muting

  • mic.unmuting

• Messages MUST use the past tense for post-action notifications - such as;

  • mic.muted

  • mic.unmuted

  • skill.mycrofttimer.expired

See all the Message types that are currently used by the MessageBus.

Additional Support

If you have further questions, then the best place to ask them is our Community Forum or in the ~dev Channel on Mycroft Chat.