Can a web browser use MQTT?

36
votes

We are looking at using MQTT as the messaging protocol on a new device we're building. We'd also like a web interface for the device. Does anyone know if you can implement a browser client app (without additional plugins) that talks MQTT?

8
mqtt
Yes, using web sockets: mqtt.org/wiki/doku.php/mqtt_over_websockets - Steve-o
Thanks for the info., so what kind of web server is needed to support websockets? We use Apache 2 currently. - fred basset
How are you going to work around with no offline storage. - user2223032
@Steve-o this is exactly why I refused to use direct links to external webpage or website as an answer. The page you've linked to no longer exists. - ThN

8 Answers

15
votes

Yes, as mentioned in Steve-o's comment MQTT via websockets is very possible.

There are 2 options at the moment

  1. IBM's MQ 7.5 comes with websockets support, you can find details here.
  2. The Mosquitto broker has a javascript client with an example running here.

To answer your second question lighttpd has a websockets module that can be used to do forwarding to an existing broker with details here.

I've not been able to find anything for Apache that doesn't need you to write your own library to do the forwarding.

10
votes

To extend hardillbs answer:

There is a third option now:

HiveMQ supports native websockets without the need for any external web server. It works perfectly with the Javascript client of Eclipse Paho.

If you want to try it out, the public MQTTDashboard (which uses HiveMQ under the hoods) supports websockets on port 8000.

Disclosure: I am one of the developers of HiveMQ

3
votes

We've had good experience using WSS, the WebSocket to TCP Gateway (for MQTT). It means running a separate process, but that does avoid having to change Apache's configuration. WSS also has support for TLS.

2
votes

Not Apache, but you can follow this guide to install lighttpd with mod_websocket,

http://oriolrius.cat/blog/2013/09/25/server-send-push-notifications-to-client-browser-without-polling/

but for easy of use I highly recommend HiveMQ, as @Dominik recommends.

2
votes

The blog by jpmens is a good starting point to get mosquitto setup with websocket feature. He's client javascript code based on Paho is on github.

This blog "How to run your web server and MQTT WebSockets broker on the same por" explains two ways for the server side:

  • mosquitto with http configuration
  • apache+mod_websocket_mosquitto
0
votes

Why not nodejs + socket.io? They come with all gadgets included (webscokets, pub/sub, webserver,mqtt broker...). SocketCluster is another good starting point.

0
votes

This link (Download codes) is useful. Download it and modify this file mosq-mqttws31.html. Instead of the embedded java script library use this cdn

https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/paho-mqtt/1.0.1/mqttws31.js

and the client instantiation should be client = new Paho.MQTT.Client("test.mosquitto.org", 8080,"myclien256tiddd_" + parseInt(Math.random() * 100, 10));