Introduction to Data Connectors
Data Connectors, which are essentially webhooks with added features, are designed to reliably forward your data to an external service in real-time. While your data is stored in the DT Cloud for 30 days, continuously streaming data without the need for a REST API can in many custom integrations be useful. Data Connectors can be summarized in a few steps.
A sensor sends a data event to DT Cloud via a Cloud Connector.
DT Cloud uses the Data Connector to forward the events to your cloud.
Your cloud acknowledges that the event was received.
Each event is sent as an HTTPS POST request with a JSON payload. Depending on the sensor type, the fields contained in the payload may differ. A list of all event types can be found in the Events Reference.
Data Connectors have properties that make them particularly well suited for forwarding your sensor data from DT Cloud to an external service.
While similar to webhooks, Data Connectors provide an additional delivery guarantee. All events received by DT Cloud is put in a dedicated per-Data Connector queue. Messages are only removed from this queue once acknowledged, or if the message is older than 12 hours.
Data Connectors give you the lowest possible end-to-end latency from the Sensor to your cloud. DT Cloud will create one HTTPS POST request for every event we receive from the sensor. Because we do not introduce artificial wait states to aggregate events, latency is kept as low as possible no matter how many sensors you have.
All events sent by a Data Connector to an external service are encrypted using TLS with the addition of a signature secret that can be used to verify both the origin and content integrity. We recommend using Signature Secrets with Data Connectors in a production environment, and they are described in more detail under Advanced Configurations.
DT Cloud will never wait for one HTTPS POST request to complete before sending the next. A new event will always be sent instantly to your cloud, running as many HTTPS POST requests in parallel as there are events at any given moment.
