I have a topic containing a struct that leverages inheritance. I would like to simulate sending this topic to a receiver who only has the base struct in its IDL for the topic.
I'm basically trying to simulate the shapes demo (extended shapes publisher / base shapes subscriber), but I would like to see the messages (and values) of the topics sent and received. Is there a tool for that?
v/r
CG
Well, there's a variety of methods to send the Topic. You can't "simulate" sending data, but you can send "simulated data". But the application sending the data can easily be generated either with compiled or scripted programming.
I'm not sure what you mean by "see the values of the topics sent" in terms of simulation. If you already have an application that can receive the data, the application itself should be able to show that the data was sent. However, there is a development tool that RTI provides, RTI Admin Console, as a part of the Connext Professional SDK, that you can use to subscribe to and display the values of any DDS Topic independently of a subscribing application.
Unfortunately, at this time, there is no "tool" to send data. As stated, you have to use an user-coded application. But the "rtiddsgen" code generator that you need to use to generate the type support code from an IDl that defines your data type, can be directed to generate example applications that publish or subscribe to the data type defined in the IDL. You can use the "-example <platform>" argument, and rtiddsgen will output source code (in which ever language you want using the "-language <C|C++|C++11|Java>" argument) as well as the builld files for the platform of choice.
https://community.rti.com/static/documentation/connext-dds/6.1.0/doc/manuals/connext_dds_professional/code_generator/users_manual/index.htm#code_generator/users_manual/GeneratingCode.htm#4._Generating_Example_Code%3FTocPath%3D4.%2520Generating%2520Example%2520Code%7C_____0
Example platforms would be x64Linux4gcc7.3.0 or x64Win64VS2017, etc. You can run "rtiddsgen -help" to get a list of all arguments.
You can also use a scripting language like Python or Lua to create scripts that publish simulated data. You can use RTI Connector with Python, Lua or Javascript,
https://github.com/rticommunity/rticonnextdds-connector/tree/master
https://community.rti.com/static/documentation/connector/1.1.1/api/python/index.html
https://community.rti.com/static/documentation/connector/1.1.1/api/javascript/index.html
Or if you prefer to work directly in python, RTI Labs offer an experimental (aka alpha) version of a full Python API for DDS.
https://www.rti.com/developers/rti-labs/python-api