Edit this page

Domain model

Eclipse Ditto does not claim to know exactly which structure Things in the IoT have or should have.
Its idea is to be as agnostic as possible when it comes to Thing data.

Nevertheless, two coarse elements are defined in order to structure Things (see also Thing):

  • Attributes: intended for managing static metadata of a Thing - as JSON object - which does not change frequently.
  • Features: intended for managing state data (e.g. sensor data or configuration data) of a Thing.

API version 2

In API version 2 the information which subjects are allowed to READ, WRITE Things are managed separately via Policies.
The Thing only contains a policyId which links to a Policy containing the authorization information. This class diagram shows the structure Ditto requires for API version 2:

Ditto Class Diagram
Class diagram of Ditto's most basic entities in API version 2.

JSON Format

In API version 2 the most minimalistic representation of a Thing is for example the following:

{
  "thingId": "the.namespace:the-thing-id",
  "policyId": "the.namespace:the-policy-id"
}

Attributes and Features are optional (as also shown in the class diagram above), so in the example JSON above they are omitted.

A minimalistic Thing with one attribute, one Feature, and a definition could look like this:

{
  "thingId": "the.namespace:the-thing-id",
  "policyId": "the.namespace:the-policy-id",
  "definition": "digitaltwin:DigitaltwinExample:1.0.0",
  "attributes": {
    "location": "Kitchen"
  },
  "features": {
    "transmission": {
       "properties": {
         "cur_speed": 90
       }
     }
  }
}
Tags: model