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Community & Business Groups

Web Thing Protocol Community Group

The mission of this group is to define a common protocol for communicating with connected devices over the web, to enable ad-hoc interoperability on the Web of Things.

Deliverables of the group may include use cases, requirements and specifications.

The group will collaborate with the W3C Web of Things Interest Group and Working Group to ensure any specifications complement or extend the “Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description” specification.

Objectives:

  1. Define a WebSocket sub-protocol for the Web of Things, using the W3C “Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description” data model and operations
  2. Define an HTTP protocol binding for the Web of Things (or support the Web of Things Working Group in defining this protocol binding and ensuring consistency with the WebSocket sub-protocol where appropriate)
  3. Evaluate other potential Web of Things protocol bindings (e.g. CoAP)

See the proposed Community Group Charter for more information.

w3c/web-thing-protocol/
Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time

Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.

Final reports / licensing info

Date Name Commitments
Web Thing Protocol Use Cases & Requirements Licensing commitments

Drafts / licensing info

Date Name
Web Thing Protocol

Chairs, when logged in, may publish draft and final reports. Please see report requirements.

Call for Contributions: Web Thing Protocol WebSocket Sub-protocol

Having published the Web Thing Protocol Use Cases & Requirements community group report, the Web Thing Protocol Community Group has begun work on the first of its core deliverables: the Web Thing Protocol WebSocket Sub-protocol specification.

This specification is intended to facilitate the incubation of a dedicated real-time protocol for the Web of Things (WoT), to enable a WoT Consumer to communicate with one or more WoT Things over a WebSocket connection in order to monitor and control connected devices over the Web.

The Web of Things (WoT) is a collection of standardised technology building blocks that help provide interoperability on the Internet of Things (IoT). The WoT Thing Description specification defines a metadata format for describing the capabilities of “Things” (connected devices) on the Web. The WoT Discovery specification defines mechanisms for discovering Things on the Web. This specification complements those building blocks by incubating a dedicated real-time protocol for communicating with Things over the Web.

The intention is for this specification to eventually join a standards track at the W3C or another standards body.

Following a significant number of comments from Community Group members on an initial strawman proposal, we have now started work on the formal community group report.

We encourage contributions to that report on GitHub, in the form of issues and pull requests.

If you are interested in contributing to or implementing the Web Thing Protocol in your product, service or project we welcome you to join the Community Group and share your “intent to implement” on our public mailing list.

You are also welcome to join the #web-thing-protocol Discord channel to chat about our work.

Announcing Web Thing Protocol Use Cases & Requirements

The Web Thing Protocol Community Group is pleased to announce the publication of the Web Thing Protocol Use Cases & Requirements community group report.

This report defines the requirements for a common protocol for the Web of Things, and is the group’s first published final report. The group will now begin work on its core deliverables, as per the group’s charter:

  • Web Thing Protocol WebSocket Sub-protocol
  • Web Thing Protocol HTTP Sub-protocol

We welcome contributions on GitHub, and new members joining our community and mailing list.

Call for Use Cases & Requirements: Web Thing Protocol

The Web Thing Protocol Community Group is seeking input on use cases and requirements for a proposed common sub-protocol for the Web of Things. A first draft of a Use Cases & Requirements report has been published as a starting point for the conversation.

The proposed Web Thing Protocol specification will define:

  • An HTTP sub-protocol (REST API) which defines a standard way to communicate with a web thing using the HTTP protocol
  • A WebSocket sub-protocol which defines how to communicate with a web thing over a WebSocket

Feedback can be submitted via the Web Thing Protocol CG mailing list and via issues on the Group’s GitHub repository.

Call for Participation in Web Thing Protocol Community Group

The Web Thing Protocol Community Group has been launched:


The mission of this group is to define a common protocol for communicating with connected devices over the web, to enable ad-hoc interoperability on the Web of Things.

Deliverables of the group may include use cases, requirements and specifications.

The group will collaborate with the W3C Web of Things Interest Group and Working Group to ensure any specifications complement or extend the “Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description” specification.

Objectives:

  1. Define a WebSocket sub-protocol for the Web of Things, using the W3C “Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description” data model and operations
  2. Define an HTTP protocol binding for the Web of Things (or support the Web of Things Working Group in defining this protocol binding and ensuring consistency with the WebSocket sub-protocol where appropriate)
  3. Evaluate other potential Web of Things protocol bindings (e.g. CoAP)

See the proposed Community Group Charter for more information.


In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2019-09-16 by Ben Francis. The following people supported its creation: Ben Francis, Gustavo Zapico, Junde Yhi, Zoltan Kis, Dave Raggett. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group in social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at [email protected]

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team