cylon/examples/robot_commands/robot_commands.markdown

Robot Commands

This example demonstrates a feature of the Cylon API: running arbitrary commands on robots over HTTP. To demonstrate this, we're going to make a basic robot, with a custom command. This in and of itself is nothing to write home about, but you'll be able to trigger the custom command by visiting this URL in your browser:

http://localhost:8080/robots/frankie/commands/relax

First, let's make sure to load up Cylon:

var Cylon = require('../..');

Now that we've got that, let's set up the api:

// ensure you install the API plugin first:
// $ npm install cylon-api-http
Cylon.api();

And with that done let's define our robot:

Cylon.robot({
  name: 'Frankie',

The result of this method will be returned to the HTTP client as part of a JSON object.

  sayRelax: function() {
    return this.name + " says relax");
  },

Since we don't really care what actual work this robot does, but need to keep it busy, we'll just tell it to print it's name every five seconds.

  work: function(my) {
    every((5).seconds(), function() {
      console.log(my.sayRelax());
    });
  },

We'll then set up the commands object, which tells the API which commands the Robot has should be publically accessible:

  commands: function() {
    return {
      say_relax: this.sayRelax
    };
  }
});

And now that all the pieces are in place, we can start up Cylon:

Cylon.start();

Now the robot will print it's name to the console, and Cylon will serve an API to localhost:8080. Check it out!.