This document describes the ROS 2 version of rosbridge. For ROS 1, please see the ros1 branch.
This document outlines the rosbridge v2.0 protocol. The v2.0 protocol incorporates a number of requirements which have arisen since the first version of rosbridge was released, and makes a small number of modifications to facilitate greater extensibility to the protocol. At its core, the protocol still contains the same operations with the same semantics as the prior versions of rosbridge. The main change is to the structure of messages, separating control information from message information. The main new additions are fragmentation, compression, and logging.
This document outlines the protocol specification, but also touches upon the intended direction for the rosbridge server implementation. The rosbridge v2.0 server implementation is architected in a way to make it easy to add and modify protocol operations. Furthermore, the rosbridge v2.0 server decouples JSON-handling from the websockets server, allowing users to arbitrarily change the specific websockets server implementation they are using.
The message transport of rosbridge is JSON objects. The only required field is the 'op' field, which specifies the operation of that message. Each 'op' then specifies its own message semantics.
The rosbridge protocol is a set of 'op' codes which define a number of operations, along with the semantics for each operation.
The rosbridge server is a server which accepts websockets connections and implements the rosbridge protocol.
The full source code of rosbridge is located in the rosbridge_suite package. The package is located at https://github.com/robotwebtools/rosbridge_suite, and the full breakdown of the stack and its packages is detailed in section 4.5 of this document.
A rosbridge message is, in the base case, a JSON object with a string field called "op". For example:
{ "op": "Example" }The op field indicates the type of message that this is. Messages with different values for op may be handled differently.
So long as the message is a JSON object with the op field, it is a valid rosbridge message.
Optionally, a message can also provide an arbitrary string or integer ID:
{ "op": "Example",
"id": "fred"
}If an ID is provided with a message to the server, then related response messages will typically contain that ID as well. Log messages caused by this operation will also contain the ID.
Semantically, the ID is not an identifier of the specific message that it is in, but instead is an identifier for an interaction which may consist of a number of operations in back-and-forth messages. Thus, the ID may be used by multiple messages referring to the same transaction.
The rosbridge protocol defines a number of different operations. They are as follows:
Message compression / transformation:
- fragment - a part of a fragmented message
- png - a part of a PNG compressed fragmented message
Rosbridge status messages:
- set_status_level - a request to set the reporting level for rosbridge status messages
- status - a status message
ROS operations:
- Topics:
- advertise – advertise that you are publishing a topic
- unadvertise – stop advertising that you are publishing topic
- publish - a published ROS-message
- subscribe - a request to subscribe to a topic
- unsubscribe - a request to unsubscribe from a topic
- Services:
- advertise_service - advertise an external service server
- unadvertise_service - unadvertise an external service server
- call_service - a service call
- service_response - a service response
- Actions:
- advertise_action - advertise an external action server
- unadvertise_action - unadvertise an external action server
- send_action_goal - a goal sent to an action server
- cancel_action_goal - cancel an in-progress action goal
- action_feedback - feedback messages from an action server
- action_result - an action result
In general, actions or operations that the client takes (such as publishing and subscribing) have opcodes which are verbs (subscribe, call_service, unadvertise etc.).
Response messages from the server are things that the client is giving back, so they are nouns (fragment, status, service_response etc.)
(The only slight exception to this naming convention is publish)
Following is the specification of operations in the rosbridge protocol, supported by the rosbridge server. Anything marked with [experimental] may be subject to change after review.
The rosbridge protocol provides the ability to fragment messages and to compress messages.
Messages may be fragmented if they are particularly large, or if the client requests fragmentation. A fragmented message has the following format:
{ "op": "fragment",
"id": <string>,
"data": <string>,
"num": <int>,
"total": <int>
}id - an id is required for fragmented messages, in order to identify corresponding fragments for the fragmented message:
- data - a fragment of data that, when combined with other fragments of data, makes up another message
- num - the index of the fragment in the message
- total - the total number of fragments
To fragment a message, its JSON string is taken and split up into multiple substrings. For each substring, a fragment message is constructed, with the data field of the fragment populated by the substring.
To reconstruct an original message, the data fields of the fragments are concatenated, resulting in the JSON string of the original message.
Some messages (such as images and maps) can be extremely large, and for efficiency reasons we may wish to transfer them as PNG-encoded bytes. The PNG opcode duplicates the fragmentation logic of the FRG opcode (and it is possible and reasonable to only have a single fragment), except that the data field consists of ASCII-encoded PNG bytes.
{ "op": "png",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"data": <string>,
(optional) "num": <int>,
(optional) "total": <int>
}- id – only required if the message is fragmented. Identifies the fragments for the fragmented message.
- data – a fragment of a PNG-encoded message or an entire message.
- num – only required if the message is fragmented. The index of the fragment.
- total – only required if the message is fragmented. The total number of fragments.
To construct a PNG compressed message, take the JSON string of the original message and read the bytes of the string into a PNG image. Then, ASCII-encode the image. This string is now used as the data field. If fragmentation is necessary, then fragment the data and set the ID, num and total fields to the appropriate values in the fragments. Otherwise these fields can be left out.
CBOR encoding is the fastest compression method for messages containing large blobs of data, such as byte arrays and numeric typed arrays.
When CBOR compression is requested by a subscriber, a binary message will be produced instead of a JSON string. Once decoded, the message will contain a normal protocol message.
The implementation uses draft typed array tags for efficient packing of homogeneous arrays. At the moment, only little-endian packing is supported.
While CBOR encodes the entire message as CBOR, sometimes it's desirable to get the raw binary message in the ROS serialization format, which is the same format as sent between ROS nodes and stored in Bag files.
This can be useful in several cases:
- Your application already knows how to parse messages in bag files (e.g. using rosbag.js, which means that now you can use consistent code paths for both bags and live messages.
- You want to parse messages as late as possible, or in parallel, e.g. only in the thread or WebWorker that cares about the message. Delaying the parsing of the message means that moving or copying the message to the thread is cheaper when its in binary form, since no serialization between threads is necessary.
- You only care about part of the message, and don't need to parse the rest of it.
- You really care about performance; no conversion between the ROS binary format and CBOR is done in the rosbridge_sever.
The format is similar to CBOR above, but instead of the "msg" field containing the message itself
in CBOR format, instead it contains an object with a "bytes" field which is a byte array containing
the raw message. The "msg" object also includes "secs" and "nsecs" of the get_rostime() upon
receiving the message, which is especially useful when use_sim_time is set, since it will give you
the simulated time the message was received.
When using this encoding, a client application will need to know exactly how to parse the raw
message. For this it's useful to use the /rosapi/get_topics_and_raw_types service, which will give
you all topics and their raw message definitions, similar to gendeps --cat. This is the same
format as used by bag files.
rosbridge sends status messages to the client relating to the successes and failures of rosbridge protocol commands. There are four status levels: info, warning, error, none. By default, rosbridge uses a status level of error.
A rough guide for what causes the levels of status message:
- error – Whenever a user sends a message that is invalid or requests something that does not exist (ie. Sending an incorrect opcode or publishing to a topic that doesn't exist)
- warning – error, plus, whenever a user does something that may succeed but the user has still done something incorrectly (ie. Providing a partially-complete published message)
- info – warning, plus messages indicating success of various operations
{ "op": "set_level",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"level": <string>
}- level – one of 'info', 'warning', 'error', or 'none'
Sets the status level to the level specified. If a bad string is specified, the message is dropped.
{ "op": "status",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"level": <string>,
"msg": <string>
}- level – the level of this status message
- msg – the string message being logged
- id – if the status message was the result of some operation that had an id, then that id is included
These rosbridge messages interact with ROS, and correspond roughly to the messages that already exist in the current version of rosbridge.
If you wish to advertise that you are or will be publishing a topic, then use the advertise command.
{ "op": "advertise",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"topic": <string>,
"type": <string>
}-
topic – the string name of the topic to advertise
-
type – the string type to advertise for the topic
- If the topic does not already exist, and the type specified is a valid type, then the topic will be established with this type.
- If the topic already exists with a different type, an error status message is sent and this message is dropped.
- If the topic already exists with the same type, the sender of this message is registered as another publisher.
- If the topic doesn't already exist but the type cannot be resolved, then an error status message is sent and this message is dropped.
This stops advertising that you are publishing a topic.
{ "op": "unadvertise",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"topic": <string>
}-
topic – the string name of the topic being unadvertised
- If the topic does not exist, a warning status message is sent and this message is dropped
- If the topic exists and there are still clients left advertising it, rosbridge will continue to advertise it until all of them have unadvertised
- If the topic exists but rosbridge is not advertising it, a warning status message is sent and this message is dropped
The publish message is used to send data on a topic.
{ "op": "publish",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"topic": <string>,
"msg": <json>
}The publish command publishes a message on a topic.
-
topic - the string name of the topic to publish to
-
msg - the message to publish on the topic
- If the topic does not exist, then an error status message is sent and this message is dropped
- If the msg does not conform to the type of the topic, then an error status message is sent and this message is dropped
- If the msg is a subset of the type of the topic, then a warning status message is sent and the unspecified fields are filled in with defaults
Special case: if the type being published has a 'header' field, then the client can optionally omit the header from the msg. If this happens, rosbridge will automatically populate the header with a frame id of "" and the timestamp as the current time. Alternatively, just the timestamp field can be omitted, and then the current time will be automatically inserted.
{ "op": "subscribe",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"topic": <string>,
(optional) "type": <string>,
(optional) "throttle_rate": <int>,
(optional) "queue_length": <int>,
(optional) "fragment_size": <int>,
(optional) "compression": <string>
}This command subscribes the client to the specified topic. It is recommended that if the client has multiple components subscribing to the same topic, that each component makes its own subscription request providing an ID. That way, each can individually unsubscribe and rosbridge can select the correct rate at which to send messages.
- type – the (expected) type of the topic to subscribe to. If left off, type will be inferred, and if the topic doesn't exist then the command to subscribe will fail
- topic – the name of the topic to subscribe to
- throttle_rate – the minimum amount of time (in ms) that must elapse between messages being sent. Defaults to 0
- queue_length – the size of the queue to buffer messages. Messages are buffered as a result of the throttle_rate. Defaults to 0 (no queueing).
- id – if specified, then this specific subscription can be unsubscribed by referencing the ID.
- fragment_size – the maximum size that a message can take before it is to be fragmented.
- compression – an optional string to specify the compression scheme to be used on messages. Valid values are "none", "png", "cbor", and "cbor-raw".
If queue_length is specified, then messages are placed into the queue before being sent. Messages are sent from the head of the queue. If the queue gets full, the oldest message is removed and replaced by the newest message.
If a client has multiple subscriptions to the same topic, then messages are sent at the lowest throttle_rate, with the lowest fragmentation size, and highest queue_length. It is recommended that the client provides IDs for its subscriptions, to enable rosbridge to effectively choose the appropriate fragmentation size and publishing rate.
{ "op": "unsubscribe",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"topic": <string>
}- topic – the name of the topic to unsubscribe from
- id – an id of the subscription to unsubscribe
If an id is provided, then only the corresponding subscription is unsubscribed. If no ID is provided, then all subscriptions are unsubscribed.
{ "op": "advertise_service",
"type": <string>,
"service": <string>
}Advertises an external ROS service server. Requests come to the client via Call Service.
- service – the name of the service to advertise
- type – the advertised service message type
{ "op": "unadvertise_service",
"service": <string>
}Calls a ROS service.
{ "op": "call_service",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"service": <string>,
(optional) "args": <list<json>>,
(optional) "fragment_size": <int>,
(optional) "compression": <string>
}- service – the name of the service to call
- args – if the service has no args, then args does not have to be provided, though an empty list is equally acceptable. Args should be a list of json objects representing the arguments to the service
- id – an optional id to distinguish this service call
- fragment_size – the maximum size that the response message can take before it is fragmented
- compression – an optional string to specify the compression scheme to be used on messages. Valid values are "none" and "png"
Stops advertising an external ROS service server
- service – the name of the service to unadvertise
A response to a ROS service call.
{ "op": "service_response",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"service": <string>,
(optional) "values": <list<json>>,
"result": <boolean>
}- service – the name of the service that was called
- values – the return values. If the service had no return values, then this field can be omitted (and will be by the rosbridge server)
- id – if an ID was provided to the service request, then the service response will contain the ID
- result - return value of service callback. true means success, false failure.
Advertises an external ROS action server.
{ "op": "advertise_action",
"type": <string>,
"action": <string>
}Goals come to the client via the Send Action Goal capability.
- action – the name of the action to advertise
- type – the advertised action message type
{ "op": "unadvertise_action",
"action": <string>
}Sends a goal to a ROS action server.
{ "op": "send_action_goal",
(optional) "id": <string>,
"action": <string>,
"action_type": <string>,
(optional) "args": <list<json>>,
(optional) "feedback": <boolean>,
(optional) "fragment_size": <int>,
(optional) "compression": <string>
}- action – the name of the action to send a goal to
- action_type – the action message type
- args – if the goal has no args, then args does not have to be provided, though an empty list is equally acceptable. Args should be a list of json objects representing the arguments to the service.
- feedback – if true, sends feedback messages over rosbridge. Defaults to false.
- id – an optional id to distinguish this goal handle
- fragment_size – the maximum size that the result and feedback messages can take before they are fragmented
- compression – an optional string to specify the compression scheme to be used on messages. Valid values are "none" and "png"
Cancels an action goal.
{ "op": "cancel_action_goal",
"id": <string>,
"action": <string>
}The id field must match an already in-progress goal.
Used to send action feedback for a specific goal handle.
{ "op": "action_feedback",
"id": <string>,
"action": <string>,
"values": <json>
}The id field must match an already in-progress goal.
A result for a ROS action.
{ "op": "action_result",
"id": <string>,
"action": <string>,
"values": <json>,
"status": <int>,
"result": <boolean>
}- action – the name of the action that was executed
- id – if an ID was provided to the action goal, then the action result will contain the ID
- values – the result values. If the service had no return values, then this field can be omitted (and will be by the rosbridge server)
- status - return status of the action. This matches the enumeration in the
action_msgs/msg/GoalStatusROS message. - result - return value of action. True means success, false failure.
Further considerations for the rosbridge protocol are listed below.
Rosbridge no longer provides the ROS-api introspection pseudo services that it previously did. These are, for example rosbridge/topics and rosbridge/services. Instead, these services are provided as proper ROS services by the new rosapi package.
It has been suggested that rosbridge may be extended to provide an operation to sample a single message from a topic.
Rosbridge will support messages that were latched to topics internally in ROS. It is possible that the publish opcode will be extended so that remote clients can latch messages too.
Rosbridge 2.0 resides in a package named rosbridge_suite, located at https://github.com/robotwebtools/rosbridge_suite.
The meta-package will contain the following packages:
- rosbridge_library – the core rosbridge JSON-to-ROS implementation. This is be a Python library.
- rosbridge_server – depends on the rosbridge library, and implements the WebSockets server, passing incoming messages to the API and outgoing messages back to the WebSockets connection. The default server uses tornado, a python server implementation.
- rosapi – provides ROS services for various master API calls, such as listing all the topics, services, types currently in ROS