Using Type Codes

Concept

Type schemas—the names and definitions of a type and its fields—are represented by TypeCode objects. A type code value consists of a type code kind and a list of members. Type codes unambiguously match type representations and provide a more reliable test than comparing the string type names.

The TypeCode class, modeled after the corresponding CORBA API, provides access to typecode information. For details on the available operations for the TypeCode class, see the API Reference HTML documentation, which is available for all supported programming languages (select Modules, DDS API Reference, Topic Module, Type Support, Type Code Support in the corresponding reference manual).

In addition to being used locally, serialized type codes are typically published automatically during discovery as part of the built-in topics for publications and subscriptions. This allows applications to publish or subscribe to topics of arbitrary types. This functionality is useful for generic system monitoring tools like the rtiddsspy debug tool.

Note: Type codes are not cached by Connext upon receipt and are therefore not available from the built-in data returned by the DataWriter's get_matched_subscription_data() operation or the DataReader's get_matched_publication_data() operation.

If your data type has an especially complex type code, you may need to increase the value of the type_code_max_serialized_length field in the DomainParticipant's DOMAIN_PARTICIPANT_RESOURCE_LIMITS QosPolicy (DDS Extension). Or, to prevent the propagation of type codes altogether, you can set this value to zero (0). Be aware that some features of monitoring tools, as well as some features of the middleware itself (such as Content Filtered Topics) will not work correctly if you disable TypeCode propagation.

Example Description

The Topic type in this example is complex to illustrate the power of type codes. The default value for resource_limits.type_code_max_serialized_length is 2048 bytes—an insufficient size to hold the type codes of a complex type. We need to increase resource_limits.type_code_max_serialized_length so that built-in topics on the receiver side get the correct type code information of our example topic type, which has a size of 3070 bytes. Note that resource limits need to be changed both in the Publisher and Subscriber application's DomainParticipant QoS.

The subscriber has no user data readers. Our purpose is to show how to manipulate metadata describing the message type. To do this, we listen for built-in topic data describing published topics. When we get information about new topic types, we print out information about the type using the TypeCode APIs.

Download Example

Browse Example