AWS IoT: Subscribe to Topic in Browser

Question

I'm currently developing a Serverless App with AWS.

I want to subscribe to a topic using plain JavaScript (No Node.js, React, Angular etc.)

The IoT and IoTData SDK's doesn't support a "subscribe to topic" function.

To achieve this, i need to implement the aws-iot-device sdk, via require('aws-iot-device') (which i can't use in plain JS).

Unfortunatly this SDK only works with runtimes like Node.js or Browserify. So how can someone subscribe to a topic from browser? Is there a way to implement the SDK into plain JS?

Thanks in advance

Encyst

Answer 1

This is how its done, works perfectly fine:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.11.2/moment.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/crypto-js/3.1.2/components/core-min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/crypto-js/3.1.2/components/hmac-min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/crypto-js/3.1.2/components/sha256-min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/paho-mqtt/1.0.1/mqttws31.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

cp this libaries into your html.

 function SigV4Utils(){}

      SigV4Utils.sign = function(key, msg) {
          var hash = CryptoJS.HmacSHA256(msg, key);
          return hash.toString(CryptoJS.enc.Hex);
        };

        SigV4Utils.sha256 = function(msg) {
          var hash = CryptoJS.SHA256(msg);
          return hash.toString(CryptoJS.enc.Hex);
        };

        SigV4Utils.getSignatureKey = function(key, dateStamp, regionName, serviceName) {
          var kDate = CryptoJS.HmacSHA256(dateStamp, 'AWS4' + key);
          var kRegion = CryptoJS.HmacSHA256(regionName, kDate);
          var kService = CryptoJS.HmacSHA256(serviceName, kRegion);
          var kSigning = CryptoJS.HmacSHA256('aws4_request', kService);
          return kSigning;
        };

        function createEndpoint(regionName, awsIotEndpoint, accessKey, secretKey) {
          var time = moment.utc();
          var dateStamp = time.format('YYYYMMDD');
          var amzdate = dateStamp + 'T' + time.format('HHmmss') + 'Z';
          var service = 'iotdevicegateway';
          var region = regionName;
          var secretKey = secretKey;
          var accessKey = accessKey;
          var algorithm = 'AWS4-HMAC-SHA256';
          var method = 'GET';
          var canonicalUri = '/mqtt';
          var host = awsIotEndpoint;
          var credentialScope = dateStamp + '/' + region + '/' + service + '/' + 'aws4_request';
          var canonicalQuerystring = 'X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256';
          canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-Credential=' + encodeURIComponent(accessKey + '/' + credentialScope);
          canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-Date=' + amzdate;
          canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host';
          var canonicalHeaders = 'host:' + host + '\n';
          var payloadHash = SigV4Utils.sha256('');
          var canonicalRequest = method + '\n' + canonicalUri + '\n' + canonicalQuerystring + '\n' + canonicalHeaders + '\nhost\n' + payloadHash;
          var stringToSign = algorithm + '\n' +  amzdate + '\n' +  credentialScope + '\n' +  SigV4Utils.sha256(canonicalRequest);
          var signingKey = SigV4Utils.getSignatureKey(secretKey, dateStamp, region, service);
          var signature = SigV4Utils.sign(signingKey, stringToSign);
          canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-Signature=' + signature;
          canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-Security-Token=' + encodeURIComponent(AWS.config.credentials.sessionToken);
          return 'wss://' + host + canonicalUri + '?' + canonicalQuerystring;
        }
        var endpoint = createEndpoint(
        'eu-central-1',  // YOUR REGION
        'xxxxxx.iot.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com', // YOUR IoT ENDPOINT  
        accesskey, // YOUR ACCESS KEY    
        secretkey); // YOUR SECRET ACCESS KEY   

        var clientId = Math.random().toString(36).substring(7);
        var client = new Paho.MQTT.Client(endpoint, clientId);
        var connectOptions = {
          useSSL: true,
          timeout: 3,
          mqttVersion: 4,
          onSuccess: subscribe
        };
        client.connect(connectOptions);
        client.onMessageArrived = onMessage;
        client.onConnectionLost = function(e) {
           console.log(e) 
        };


        function subscribe() {
         client.subscribe("my/things/something");
         console.log("subscribed");
        }

        function onMessage(message) {
          var status = JSON.parse(message.payloadString);
        }

With this code, you can subscribe to IoT Topics in plain client side JavaScript. No Node.js, React.js or similar is needed!

Encyst

That's a lot of code and (arguably) sensitive information in client, I'd move (in the matter of fact that's what I do) signing code to server-side and query API endpoint which returns signed url. – Doublejointed

This line requires a variable session_token. Where does that come from? canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-Security-Token=' + encodeURIComponent(session_token); return 'wss://' + host + canonicalUri + '?' + canonicalQuerystring; – Computation

Hey, we changed that line to canonicalQuerystring += '&X-Amz-Security-Token=' + encodeURIComponent(AWS.config.credentials.sessionToken); You should be able to just call AWS.config.credentials.sessionToken by default, if you included the right AWS libaries. Sorry for answering quite late....holidays :D – Encyst

Answer 2

You can use paho js or mqttjs in the browser. The aws-iot-device sdk for javascript is a wrapper around mqttjs.

Tuesday