iRobot: Mock ROS in Pure Python

Overview

iRobot is a lightweight, pure-Python “mock ROS” framework that implements a simple peer-to-peer pub/sub system, backed by SQLite for subscription registry and message history. It exposes a Publisher and Subscriber API, a thread-safe DBManager for CRUD operations, and a CLI entry point (iRobot run …) for launching nodes.

Features

• Pub/Sub over TCP
• SQLite registry of subscribers and message history
• CRUD operations for subscriptions and messages
• Thread-safe singleton database manager
• CLI wrapper: iRobot run [--args …]
• Example nodes: talker (publisher) and listener (subscriber)
• Comprehensive pytest test suite
• Easy installation via pip install -e .

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8 or newer

• (Optional) A virtual environment tool (venv, conda, etc.)

• (On macOS/Linux) pip

Installation

# Clone your repo locally
git clone https://github.com/trieut415/iRobot.git
cd mock_ros

# Create and activate a virtualenv (optional but recommended)
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install the package in editable mode
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -e .

Note: Installing in editable mode (-e) lets you iterate on the code without reinstalling.

Usage

You can invoke the framework via the console script iRobot:

# Run the talker (publisher) node
iRobot run nodes_py talker --topic chatter --message "Hello, ROS!" --rate 2.0

# In another terminal, run the listener (subscriber) node
iRobot run nodes_py listener --topic chatter

If you prefer not to install the console script, you can run the CLI module directly:

python -m irobot.cli run nodes_py talker --topic chatter --message "Hi there" --rate 1.0
python -m irobot.cli run nodes_py listener --topic chatter

Node Arguments

• talker

  • --topic (default: chatter)
  • --message (default: "Hello, ROS!")
  • --rate (Hz, default: 1.0)

• listener

  • --topic (default: chatter)

Testing

Run the pytest suite:

# from the project root
pip install pytest
pytest -q

You should see all tests pass, verifying DB operations, networking, and CLI error handling.