Syndicate data from your embedded devices

Step 9 In-depth:What exactly does syndicitGATE do?

SyndicitGATE is a simple Visual Basic program that creates a HTTP POST and sends it through winsock32.dll. In debug mode you can see exactly what the HTTP post looks like. Details on on the syndicit.com backend follow.

The backend address is http://www.syndicit.com/backend. To access the database you must have your syndicit.com username, a feedname, a feed password, and one or more variables setup for the feed. Data can be added using HTTP GET and HTTP POST.

Username, feed path, and feed password are required to login to the backend. These should be sent as variables named ‘user’, ‘feed’, and ‘feedpassword’ respectively.

Example feed located at ‘syndicit.com/stream/ian/test_device/’:

‘user’ – your syndicit.com username (user=ian).
‘feed’ – the path assigned to your device (feed=test_device)
‘feedpassword’ – the password you gave your feed on the setup page (e.g. feedpassword=testpassword)

if the feed has two variables located at the following paths:

stream/ian/test_device/outdoor_temperature
stream/ian/test_device/indoor_temperature

the data values are inserted by using the pathname as the variable name:

outdoor_temperature=24.5
indoor_temperature=23.2

GET is the easiest method to do an insert, but very insecure. Simply add the required variables to the web site address. To insert the values in the example with the password ‘testpassword’, we do the following:

http://www.syndicit.com/backend/?user=ian&feed=test_device&feedpassword=testpassword&outdoor_temperature=24.5&indoor_temperature=23.2

POST is more secure but more complicated. To submit data by the POST method you must emulate the action of pressing the submit button on an HTML page.

Variables can be send by BOTH POST and GET together. POSTed variables ALWAYS override GET variables.

I have 2 variables in a feed, do I have to submit both every time?
No, the variables you send to the backend are saved independent of any other variables the device may have.

What do the backend result codes mean?
The backend returns single character results codes. Here is what they mean:
0 – user, feed, or feedpassword not set.
1 – user, feed, feedpassword, or IP address (if lock enabled) not correct
2 – N/A
3 – successful authentication, variables saved.