NGSIv2 Implementation Notes

This document describes some considerations to take into account regarding the specific implementation done by Orion Context Broker of the NGSIv2 specification.

Forbidden characters

From "Field syntax restrictions" section at NGSIv2 specification:

In addition to the above rules, given NGSIv2 server implementations could add additional syntactical restrictions in those or other fields, e.g., to avoid cross script injection attacks.

The additional restrictions that apply to Orion are the ones describe in the forbidden characters section of the manual.

Custom payload decoding on notifications

Due to forbidden characters restriction, Orion applies an extra decoding step to outgoing custom notifications. This is described in detail in this section of the manual.

Option to disable custom notifications

Orion can be configured to disable custom notifications, using the -disableCustomNotifications CLI parameter.

In this case:

  • httpCustom is interpreted as http, i.e. all sub-fields except url are ignored
  • No ${...} macro substitution is performed.

Limit to attributes for entity location

From "Geospatial properties of entities" section at NGSIv2 specification:

Client applications are responsible for defining which entity attributes convey geospatial properties (by providing an appropriate NGSI attribute type). Typically this is an entity attribute named location, but nothing prevents use cases where an entity contains more than one geospatial attribute. For instance, locations specified at different granularity levels or provided by different location methods with different accuracy. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that spatial properties need special indexes which can be under resource constraints imposed by backend databases. Thus, implementations may raise errors when spatial index limits are exceeded. The recommended HTTP status code for those situations is 413, Request entity too large, and the reported error on the response payload must be NoResourcesAvailable.

In the case of Orion, that limit is one (1) attribute.

Legacy attribute format in notifications

Apart from the values described for attrsFormat in the NGSIv2 specification, Orion also supports a legacy value, in order to send notifications in NGSIv1 format. This way, users can benefit from the enhancements of NGSIv2 subscriptions (e.g. filtering) with NGSIv1 legacy notification receivers.

Disable attribute detail in GET types operation

Not yet implemented, but is expected that Orion will implmement the noAttrsType option for the GET /v2/types operation in order to not include attribute details (whose aggregation could be costly in terms of performance).

Related with: https://github.com/telefonicaid/fiware-orion/issues/2073

Scope functionality

Orion implements a scope field in the POST /v2/op/update operation (you can see an example in the NGSIv2 walkthrough). However, note that this syntax is somewhat experimental and it hasn't been consolidated in the NGSIv2 specification.

Error responses

The error response rules defined in https://github.com/telefonicaid/fiware-orion/issues/1286 takes precedence over the ones described in "Error Responses" section in the NGSIv2 specification. In particular, Orion Context Broker never responds with "InvalidModification (422)", using "Unprocessable (422)" instead.

Subscription payload validations

The particular validations that Orion implements on NGSIv2 subscription payloads are the following ones:

  • description: optional (max length 1024)
  • subject: mandatory
  • entities: mandatory
    • id or idPattern: one of them is mandatory (but both at the same time is not allowed). id must follow NGSIv2 restrictions for IDs. idPattern must be not empty and a valid regex.
    • type: optional (but if present it must follow NGSIv2 restrictions for IDs)
  • condition: optional (but if present it must have a content, i.e. {} is not allowed)
    • attrs: optional (but if present it must be a list; empty list is allowed)
    • expression: optional (but if present it must have a content, i.e. {} is not allowed)
    • q: optional (but if present it must be not empty, i.e. "" is not allowed)
    • georel: optional (but if present it must be not empty, i.e. "" is not allowed)
    • geometry: optional (but if present it must be not empty, i.e. "" is not allowed)
    • coords: optional (but if present it must be not empty, i.e. "" is not allowed)
  • notification:
  • http: must be present if httpCustom is omitted, forbidden otherwise
    • url: mandatory (must be a valid URL)
  • httpCustom: must be present if http is omitted, forbidden otherwise
    • url: mandatory (must be not empty)
    • headers: optional (but if present it must have a content, i.e. {} is not allowed)
    • qs: optional (but if present it must have a content, i.e. {} is not allowed)
    • method: optional (but if present it must be a valid HTTP method)
    • payload: optional (empty string is allowed)
  • attrs: optional (but if present it must be a list; empty list is allowed)
  • metadata: optional (but if present it must be a list; empty list is allowed)
  • exceptAttrs: optional (but it cannot be present if attrs is also used; if present it must be a non-empty list)
  • attrsFormat: optional (but if present it must be a valid attrs format keyword)
  • throttling: optional (must be an integer)
  • expires: optional (must be a date or empty string "")
  • status: optional (must be a valid status keyword)

actionType metadata

From NGSIv2 specification section "Special metadata in notifications", regarding actionType metadata:

Its value depend on the request operation type: update for updates, append for creation and delete for deletion. Its type is always Text.

Current Orion implementation supports "update" and "append". The "delete" case will be supported upon completion of this issue.