This is a long post which covers some oddness I noticed when changing the protocol used by an Azure IoT Hub client from Message Queuing Telemetry Transport(MQTT) to Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP). I want to build a console application to test the pooling of AMQP connections so I started with an MQTT client written for another post.

class Program
{
   private static string payload;

   static async Task Main(string[] args)
   {
      string filename;
      string azureIoTHubconnectionString;
      DeviceClient azureIoTHubClient;

      if (args.Length != 2)
      {
         Console.WriteLine("[JOSN file] [AzureIoTHubConnectionString]");
         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
         return;
      }

      filename = args[0];
      azureIoTHubconnectionString = args[1];

      try
      {
         payload = File.ReadAllText(filename);

         // Open up the connection
         azureIoTHubClient = DeviceClient.CreateFromConnectionString(azureIoTHubconnectionString, TransportType.Mqtt);
         //azureIoTHubClient = DeviceClient.CreateFromConnectionString(azureIoTHubconnectionString, TransportType.Mqtt_Tcp_Only);
         //azureIoTHubClient = DeviceClient.CreateFromConnectionString(azureIoTHubconnectionString, TransportType.Mqtt_WebSocket_Only);

         await azureIoTHubClient.OpenAsync();

         await azureIoTHubClient.SetMethodDefaultHandlerAsync(MethodCallbackDefault, null);

         Timer MessageSender = new Timer(TimerCallback, azureIoTHubClient, new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10), new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10));


         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
      }
   }

   public static async void TimerCallback(object state)
   {
      DeviceClient azureIoTHubClient = (DeviceClient)state;

      try
      {
         // I know having the payload as a global is a bit nasty but this is a demo..
         using (Message message = new Message(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(payload))))
         {
            Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync start", DateTime.UtcNow);
            await azureIoTHubClient.SendEventAsync(message);
            Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync finish", DateTime.UtcNow);
         }
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
      }
   }

   private static async Task<MethodResponse> MethodCallbackDefault(MethodRequest methodRequest, object userContext)
   {
      Console.WriteLine($"Default handler method {methodRequest.Name} was called.");

      return new MethodResponse(200);
   }
}

I configured an Azure IoT hub then used Azure IoT explorer to create a device and get the connections string for my application. After fixing up the application’s command line parameters I could see the timer code was successfully sending telemetry messages to my Azure IoT Hub. I also explored the different MQTT connections options TransportType.Mqtt, TransportType.Mqtt_Tcp_Only, and TransportType.Mqtt_WebSocket_Only which worked as expected.

I could also initiate Direct Method calls to my console application from Azure IoT explorer.

I then changed the protocol to AMQP

class Program
{
   private static string payload;

   static async Task Main(string[] args)
   {
      string filename;
      string azureIoTHubconnectionString;
      DeviceClient azureIoTHubClient;
      Timer MessageSender;

      if (args.Length != 2)
      {
         Console.WriteLine("[JOSN file] [AzureIoTHubConnectionString]");
         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
         return;
      }

      filename = args[0];
      azureIoTHubconnectionString = args[1];

      try
      {
         payload = File.ReadAllText(filename);

         // Open up the connection
         azureIoTHubClient = DeviceClient.CreateFromConnectionString(azureIoTHubconnectionString, TransportType.Amqp);
         //azureIoTHubClient = DeviceClient.CreateFromConnectionString(azureIoTHubconnectionString, TransportType.Amqp_Tcp_Only);
         //azureIoTHubClient = DeviceClient.CreateFromConnectionString(azureIoTHubconnectionString, TransportType.Amqp_WebSocket_Only);

         await azureIoTHubClient.OpenAsync();

         await azureIoTHubClient.SetMethodDefaultHandlerAsync(MethodCallbackDefault, null);

         //MessageSender = new Timer(TimerCallbackAsync, azureIoTHubClient, new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10), new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10));
         MessageSender = new Timer(TimerCallbackSync, azureIoTHubClient, new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10), new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10));

#if MESSAGE_PUMP
         Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit");
         while (!Console.KeyAvailable)
         {
            await Task.Delay(100);
         }
#else
         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
#endif
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
      }
   }

   public static async void TimerCallbackAsync(object state)
   {
      DeviceClient azureIoTHubClient = (DeviceClient)state;

      try
      {
         // I know having the payload as a global is a bit nasty but this is a demo..
         using (Message message = new Message(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(payload))))
         {
            Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync start", DateTime.UtcNow);
            await azureIoTHubClient.SendEventAsync(message);
            Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync finish", DateTime.UtcNow);
         }
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
      }
   }

   public static void TimerCallbackSync(object state)
   {
      DeviceClient azureIoTHubClient = (DeviceClient)state;

      try
      {
         // I know having the payload as a global is a bit nasty but this is a demo..
         using (Message message = new Message(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(payload))))
         {
            Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync start", DateTime.UtcNow);
            azureIoTHubClient.SendEventAsync(message).GetAwaiter();
            Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync finish", DateTime.UtcNow);
         }
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
      }
   }


   private static async Task<MethodResponse> MethodCallbackDefault(MethodRequest methodRequest, object userContext)
   {
      Console.WriteLine($"Default handler method {methodRequest.Name} was called.");

      return new MethodResponse(200);
   }
}

In the first version of my console application I could see the SendEventAsync method was getting called but was not returning

Even though the SendEventAsync call was not returning the telemetry messages were making it to my Azure IoT Hub.

When I tried to initiate a Direct Method call from Azure IoT Explorer it failed after a while with a timeout.

The first successful approach I tried was to change the Console.Readline to a “message pump” (flashbacks to Win32 API programming).

Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit");
while (!Console.KeyAvailable)
{
   await Task.Delay(100);
}

After some more experimentation I found that changing the timer method from asynchronous to synchronous also worked.

public static void TimerCallbackSync(object state)
{
   DeviceClient azureIoTHubClient = (DeviceClient)state;

   try
   {
      // I know having the payload as a global is a bit nasty but this is a demo..
      using (Message message = new Message(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(payload))))
      {
         Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync start", DateTime.UtcNow);
         azureIoTHubClient.SendEventAsync(message).GetAwaiter();
         Console.WriteLine(" {0:HH:mm:ss} AzureIoTHubDeviceClient SendEventAsync finish", DateTime.UtcNow);
      }
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
      Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
   }
}

I also had to change the method declaration and modify the SendEventAsync call to use a GetAwaiter.

It took a while to figure out enough about what was going on so I could do a search with the right keywords (DeviceClient AMQP async await SendEventAsync) to confirm my suspicion that MQTT and AMQP clients did behave differently.

For anyone who reads this post, I think this Github issue about task handling and blocking calls is most probably the answer (October 2020).