Qt MQTT Overview

Qt MQTT enables you to create applications and devices that can communicate over the MQ telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol. It fully complies to the MQTT protocol specification.

Publish and Subscribe

MQTT is a machine-to-machine connectivity protocol that operates on the publish-and-subscribe model. An MQTT client is a program or device that uses MQTT to create a network connection to an MQTT server, also called a broker. Once a connection is created, the client can send messages to the broker. The other clients can subscribe to notifications on particular topics sent by the client.

For example, if Client 2 subscribes to messages on Topic A, it receives a notification when Client 1 sends a message on that topic. If Client 3subscribes to Topic A and Topic B, it receives notifications about messages on both those topics.

Qt MQTT is a client solution that does not include a broker. It is especially suitable for developing telemetry applications for embedded devices. However, Qt MQTT has no external dependencies, and therefore the implemented clients can be run on all supported Qt platforms.

MQTT 的 Topic 有层级结构，并且支持通配符 + 和 #:

• + 是匹配单层的通配符。比如 news/+ 可以匹配 news/sports，news/+/basketball 可匹配到 news/sports/basketball。
• # 是一到多层的通配符。比如 news/# 可以匹配 news、 news/sports、news/sports/basketball 以及 news/sports/basketball/x 等等。

MQTT 的主题是不要预先创建的，发布者发送消息到某个主题、或者订阅者订阅某个主题的时候，Broker 就会自动创建这个主题。

会话保持

MQTT 没有假设设备或 Broker 使用了 TCP 的保活机制4，而是设计了协议层的保活机制：在 CONNECT 报文里可设置 Keepalive 字段，来设置保活心跳包 PINGREQ/PINGRESP 的发送时间间隔。当长时间无法收到设备的 PINGREQ 的时候，Broker 就会认为设备已经下线。

总的来说，Keepalive 有两个作用：

• 发现对端死亡或者网络中断
• 在长时间无消息交互的情况下，保持连接不被网络设备断开

对于那些想要在重新上线后，重新收到离线期间错过的消息的设备，MQTT 设计了持久化连接：在 CONNECT 报文里可设置 CleanSession 字段为 False，则 Broker 会为终端存储：

• 设备所有的订阅
• 还未被设备确认的 QoS1 和 QoS 消息
• 设备离线时错过的消息