developer integrations

Integrations are the interface between YIO-remote and the outside world. Using the "smarthome - typical" openHAB integration as example the necessary pieces of an integration are explained.

Plugin Project Setup

Environment Setup

To develop a YIO Remote integration plugin the integrations.library project needs to be checked out and made accessible for the plugin project.
We recommend to check out integrations.library on the same level as the plugin project. I.e. the library can be referenced with the default path ../integrations.library.
This is the only mandatory dependency of an integration plugin project.

Example for an imaginary FooBar plugin:

~/projects
└── yio
    ├── integration.foobar
    ├── integrations.library
    └── remote-software

For other non-standard project setups there's the YIO_SRC environment variable. It needs to be initialized to the base directory of the integrations.library project.

Plugin Project File

Blueprint to include one or more integration Qt project includes into the plugin project:

INTG_LIB_PATH = $$(YIO_SRC)
isEmpty(INTG_LIB_PATH) {
    INTG_LIB_PATH = $$clean_path($$PWD/../integrations.library)
    message("Environment variables YIO_SRC not defined! Using '$$INTG_LIB_PATH' for integrations.library project.")
} else {
    INTG_LIB_PATH = $$(YIO_SRC)/integrations.library
    message("YIO_SRC is set: using '$$INTG_LIB_PATH' for integrations.library project.")
}

! include($$INTG_LIB_PATH/yio-plugin-lib.pri) {
    error( "Cannot find the yio-plugin-lib.pri file!" )
}

The plugin class - instance factory

The plugin class is used to setup an integration. Its create function is used to create one or more integration instances. An integration should used categorized logging, which can be controlled from outside to adjust the log levels using setLogEnabled function. A reference of the _log object must be propagated to the integration instances. The category name must be equal to the name of the plugin.

Create function parameters :

• config the configuration parameters of the integration
• entities all entities (cast to EntitiesInterface)
• notifications (cast to NotificationsInterface)
• api (cast to YioAPIInterface)
• configObj whole config.json (cast to ConfigInterface)

Sample :

class OpenHABPlugin : public PluginInterface
{
    Q_OBJECT
    Q_PLUGIN_METADATA(IID "YIO.PluginInterface" FILE "openhab.json")
    Q_INTERFACES(PluginInterface)
public:
    explicit OpenHABPlugin (QObject* parent = nullptr) :
        _log("openhab")
    {
        Q_UNUSED(parent)
    }
    virtual ~OpenHABPlugin () override
    {}
    void        create         (const QVariantMap& config, QObject *entities, QObject *notifications, QObject* api,
                                QObject *configObj) override;
    void        setLogEnabled  (QtMsgType msgType, bool enable) override
    {
        _log.setEnabled(msgType, enable);
    }
private:
    QLoggingCategory    _log;
};

The create functions creates the integration instances, calls their setup function and emits createDone with information about all instances.

Sample :

void OpenHABPlugin::create(const QVariantMap &config, QObject *entities, QObject *notifications, QObject *api, QObject *configObj)
{
    QMap<QObject *, QVariant>   returnData;
    QVariantList                data;

    for (QVariantMap::const_iterator iter = config.begin(); iter != config.end(); ++iter) {
        if (iter.key() == "data") {
            data = iter.value().toList();
            break;
        }
    }
    for (int i = 0; i < data.length(); i++)
    {
        OpenHAB* openhab = new OpenHAB(_log, this);
        openhab->setup(data[i].toMap(), entities, notifications, api, configObj);
        QVariantMap d = data[i].toMap();
        d.insert("type", config.value("type").toString());
        returnData.insert(openhab, d);
    }
    if (data.length() > 0)
        emit createDone(returnData);
}

The integration instance class

The integration instance class must derive from the Integration class. It provides some features common for all integrations:

• Properties
  • state (CONNECTED, CONNECTING, DISCONNECTED) must be set by the integration calling setState. This function implicetly sets the connected state of all entities of the integration.
  • integrationId and friendlyName, both are set by the Integration::setup function which must be called by the integrations setup function.
  • m_entities is set to the EntitiesInterface, which can be used to access all entities.
• Virtual Functions
  • connect (must be overriden)
  • disconnect (must be overriden)
  • enterStandby (overriden if required)
  • leaveStandby (overriden if required)
  • sendCommand gets the commands (must be overriden)
• setup function, must be called by integrations setup function
• setState function indicates change of connection state, must be called by the integration instance. It implicitelly set the "connected" state of every entity belonging to the integration.

Sample :

void OpenHAB::setup (const QVariantMap& config, QObject *entities, QObject *notifications, QObject* api, QObject *configObj)
{
    Integration::setup (config, entities);

The function connect is called at startup and when Wifi connection is reestablished. disconnect is called before WiFi is turned off. enterStandby and leaveStandby are called when the standby mode changes. Especially for polling integrations we recommend to adjust the polling interval when the YIO remote is standby to save power.

A really smart integration should check, if it gets information for every entity belonging to it. If not, this entity should be set to not connected.

Performance Considerations

While the UI uses CPU only when there is some user interaction, integrations are running permanently. Paying attention to performance is not primarily necessary to gain speed but to save battery power. Here some recommendations :

• Don't work with strings, use enums. They are at minimum hundred times faster.
• Don't rely on compiler optimization. Build intermediate results instead of computing again and again the same chains of variantMap.value("xxx").toMap().value("yyy").toMap().value("zzz")
• Return references (&) whereever possible instead of copying complex objects like QVariantMap, QStringList, etc.
• Use enter/leaveStandby
• Reuse "expensive* objects like QNetworkAccessManager
• Use dynamically allocated objects only if necessary, it helps also to avoid memory leaks.
• Implement feature rich classes instead of implementing multiple used functionalities outside the class
• Processing JSON data with QJSonObject and QJsonArray is faster then taking the detour with QVariantMap and QVariantList