Octovisor is a IPC/RPC library that allows you to share objects and values easily between your different applications. It is composed of a message server that will run on its own and a client API that will let you communicate with other processes using that API on the same server.

Usage

Build the Octovisor.Server project along with Octovisor.Messages for your system, and make configuration file called config.yaml in the same directory as Octovisor.Server.dll, make sure it is formatted like this.

Once you have the server running you want to use the octovisor client API (Octovisor.Client), add it as reference in your project and follow the example below. Do note that your Config object must have the same token and port as the config file used for the server.

NOTE: I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING OCTOVISOR IN PERFORMANCE CRITICAL AREAS AS IT RELIES ON NETWORK SPEED EVEN LOCALLY (FOR NOW).

Example

Here we have a process that calls itself "Process2", and that replies with the string "bar" everytime it receives a transmission with the identifier "foo".

Config config = new Config
{
    Token = "token",
    Address = "127.0.0.1",
    Port = 6558,
    ProcessName = "Process2",
};

OctoClient client = new OctoClient(config);
await client.ConnectAsync();
client.OnTransmission<string, string>("foo", (proc, data) => "bar");

This other process called "Process1" transmits long strings to our previous process and gets the appropriate answer.

Config config = new Config
{
    Token = "token",
    Address = "127.0.0.1",
    Port = 6558,
    ProcessName = "Process1",
};

OctoClient client = new OctoClient(config);
await client.ConnectAsync();
if (client.TryGetProcess("Process2", out RemoteProcess proc))
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        string result = await proc.TransmitObjectAsync<string, string>("foo", new string('A', 10000));
        Console.WriteLine(result);
    }
}

output:

bar
bar
bar
etc...

Debugging

Because its not always easy to work on process communication, Octovisor comes with a debugger for windows users. You can run your C# scripts at runtime to work with transmission handlers, or send arbitrary objects to other processes for example.

Current state

Currently Octovisor is still in its early development, I am always looking for help and feedback on my work, it helps me provide a quality experience, so if you believe you can help in any ways, please do.

Future

Once the .NET version is free of bugs and necessary improvements I might start writing other implementations of the client in other well-known languages, starting with JavaScript to allow Octovisor to evolve through an extended eco-system.