After installing nv (only the Python version is supported at this time), you gain access to nvcli, a command line interface for the nv network. This can be used for monitoring of nodes and communications between them, debugging, and manually interacting with the nv network.
The help text can be launched with the command nv
Currently there’s not much going on within the nv network, so for now we can use some of the provided examples to create some traffic on the network.
Locate the provided examples folder (or clone the repo from GitHub), and run all the following examples:
publisher.[py|js]subscriber.[py|js]parameters.[py|js]service_server.py|serviceServer.js
First up, we should have a look at all the nodes we’ve just spawned. The node command is used to see which nodes are present on the network, and get information about them.
Run nv node list to display the currently running nodes.
Maybe we want to find out more information about the publisher_node node. Run nv node info [NODE_NAME] to see more information.
Topics are the primary means of communication between nodes. Similarly to the node command above, we can use nv topic list to see which topics are in use on the nv network.
To monitor what’s being sent over a topic, use nv topic echo.
Conversely, we can use nv topic pub [TOPIC_NAME] [DATA] to publish to a topic.
We can see which services are available on the network by running nv service list.
We can call a service using nv service call [SERVICE_NAME] -a {ARG} -k {KWARG}
Finally we have the ability to interact with parameters. Unlike the previous nvcli commands, the param commands are all node-specific, meaning a node name must be supplied each time.
List all parameters which currently exist for a node using nv param list [NODE_NAME].
We can get the value of a single parameter with nv param get [NODE_NAME] [PARAM_NAME].
Perhaps more excitingly, we can also set or modify the values of parameters using nv param set [NODE_NAME] [PARAM_NAME] [VALUE]. If the parameter doesn’t already exist it will be created.
Parameters don’t have to be set on nodes which already exist, any node is valid even if it’s not running. Furthermore, all valid stringified JSON is allowed as the value, and it will be parsed automatically within the node.
