LabVIEW WebSockets API – now Open-Source!

MediaMongrels Ltd are pleased to announce that we have taken the decision to make the LabVIEW WebSockets API Open-Source and the source is now available on GitHub.

Background

I was at NI Days Europe last week – mostly there to talk about LabVIEW WebVIs, show off my DemocracyBot and help out with the LabVIEW Community Booth (Short version: Great success!). I’ll post more about my time there in another post but the last session I went to on the Thursday was from Joerg Hampel (Hampel Software Engineering) and James McNally (Wiresmith Technology) on Open-Source projects.

Their session was to encourage LabVIEW developers to make their projects Open-Source and they showed a practical example of using GitHub to make a contribution to an Open-Source project – in this case the excellent G-CLI toolkit.

You can access their presentation by clicking the button below:

I was so inspired by their excellent talk and NI’s decision to create the free LabVIEW Community Edition that I have decided to put the LabVIEW WebSockets API on GitHub and make it Open-Source (still under the MIT license).

WebSockets API on GitHub

You can access the public GitHub repository for the WebSockets library by hitting the button below:

I’ll also be using GitHub in future for support and issue tracking with the library – you’ll be able to see whether issues have already been reported and see progress on adding new features.

You’ll also get immediate access to new releases by downloading the VI Package from the releases page – I will still be publishing the packages to the NI Tools Network.

You’ll also be able to fork the library and contribute towards fixing issues and implementing new features.

Secure WebSockets (wss://) and LabVIEW NXG Support

If you’ve checked out the GitHub repository, you’ll see there’s already a couple of issues in there regarding support for Secure WebSockets (wss://) and LabVIEW NXG.

Feel free to sign up for updates/notifications on those issues – with NI’s announcement that SSL/TLS support is coming to the TCP/IP VIs in LabVIEW 2020 I’ll be aiming to update the library to support Secure WebSockets in line with the LabVIEW 2020 release. Once these new functions are available in the LabVIEW 2020 Beta I will begin working on adding them to the WebSockets library.

Open-Source all the things!

In the coming weeks, I’ll be moving over all of my Raspberry Pi / LINX code over to the MediaMongrels Ltd GitHub account as well. You’ll be able to find a list of all projects

I encourage you to have a look at their presentation if you get the chance and also to contribute to Open-Source LabVIEW projects. I feel like GCentral is going to play an important part in finding reusable libraries and Open-Source projects in future.

Of course, if you see our open source code & projects and want to support them – the best way to do that is to hire us to work for you on your projects! Get in touch and see how we can help you with your LabVIEW Software and WebSockets applications.