[FEATURE REQUEST] HTTP requests for home automation control

[jojolll]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Not a problem, but here's the context:
I want to drive my 3D printer with a cheap 433MHz plug.
I have a home automation system similar to Jeedom which controls about ten of these plugs, via a RFLINK gateway.

Describe the solution you'd like
Controlling a home automation system from a HTTP request is very simple, and this is what I wanted to add to ESP3D to simply turn off my 433MHz plug at the end of printing.
To do this, I didn't find anything in the current release. So I added in the Arduino code command.cpp a new custom command case.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I didn't find any simple alternative to control my home automation, then knowing that the ESP is connected to the home network it would be stupid to do without a simple request.

Here is the solution that I set up in command.cpp (as a beginner coder I specify, I have no pretension to say that it is optimized it is simply functional and it meets my need) :

Before the originals #include

#include <ESP8266HTTPClient.h> // PERSONNAL MOD
HTTPClient http;

after #endif and before case 700:

    //HTTP Custom request [ESP666] URL=<url>
    case 666:
        parameter = get_param (cmd_params, "URL=", true);
        if (parameter.length() == 0) {
            ESPCOM::println ("Faut entrer une URL banane", output, espresponse);
            return false;
        }
        http.begin(parameter);
        http.GET();
        http.end();
        
        break;

I can now add to my gcode this command in order to launch a GET request:
M118 P0 [ESP666] URL=http://domotic-ip:8080/devicetype/4/exec?token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxf&value=0
and this is turning off my plug 👍
We can then imagine an infinite number of scenarios
EDIT : I changed my scenario, now I intend to inform my home automation at the beginning of printing so that it blocks the wifi on if I go to bed, and at the end of printing to turn it off then, and also turn off the plug a few seconds later.

I haven't received my printer yet the only tests I've done are in serial, but it must be the same ;)

The only "problem" encountered is the disappearance of the end of the message after the "&" character in the link when I enter the order via the ESP3D web interface. I have no idea why, but when I enter this character it considers the command as finished, so everything else after this character is ignored. I was unable to identify the source of the problem.

This problem does not exist when using the serial console to send the command. Knowing that this is the protocol that the printer will use, it is fine with me.

[github-actions]

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[luc-github]

WebUI macro allows to use such URL command ( enfin sans la banane ^_^) but indeed there is no such mechanism for gcode

About web command this is due to fact that the command is encoded but because it is seens as valid url the & is not encoded and so become part of ESP web command - it may be fixed by forcing the & encoding I had to do for another char like this - I need to check - you can try by changing & with %26 to see if it solve the problem

Adding a new [ESPXXX] command for this could be a good idea - using notification command

[jojolll]

I finally received my printer and was able to test my protocol: it didn't work! 💯

There's a problem I didn't have in mind with Marlin, every ":" in the URL makes it think it's a command, so it doesn't reach ESP3D in one "sentence".
So I changed my code, to make 3 parameters (IP, PORT and PATH) to create a concatenated URL with http://... before sending the GET request.

Again it didn't work, I have the impression that despite serial communication, either marlin or esp3D don't like "&" and delete the end of the URL. I haven't been able to see where it comes from so for now I hardcoded my URL into the esp3D code. It's beautiful, I know 👍 👍

[luc-github]

did you changed the & by %26 ?

[jojolll]

did you changed the & by %26 ?
Not tried directly in the gcode. I try as soon as I finish my print

[jojolll]

Didn't work either, exactly the same error :(

[luc-github]

Ok I think the easiest solution is to use encoded64 URL
so url : https://github.com/luc-github/ESP3D/issues/524 using a simple encoder https://www.base64encode.org/
will give :
aHR0cHM6Ly9naXRodWIuY29tL2x1Yy1naXRodWIvRVNQM0QvaXNzdWVzLzUyNA==

it should avoid any char conflict

so the command would be [ESP620] URL=aHR0cHM6Ly9naXRodWIuY29tL2x1Yy1naXRodWIvRVNQM0QvaXNzdWVzLzUyNA==

I will work on this today - seems decode64 is not same between esp32 and esp8266

[jojolll]

aHR0cHM6Ly9naXRodWIuY29tL2x1Yy1naXRodWIvRVNQM0QvaXNzdWVzLzUyNA==

Hello !
Since I don't really have any coding basics, it didn't occur to me to decode the URL from ESP, but your message made me think.

At the beginning I looked in base64 but indeed it's a mess between Esp32 and 8266. in addition you have to use character tables for existing libraries and I don't like that x)

Looking at the encoding formats there is simply the "URL encode", which I think was your original idea but I hadn't tried to decode it on the esp side, that's why it didn't work.

So I'm correcting the situation, what do you think about something like that:

//HTTP Custom request [ESP666] URL=<Encoded URL, ex: "URL=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fluc-github%2FESP3D%2Fissues%2F524">
    case 666:
        parameter = get_param (cmd_params, "URL=");
        if (!parameter.length()) {
            ESPCOM::println ("Faut entrer une URL banane", output, espresponse);
            return false;
        }
        request = urldecode(parameter);
        ESPCOM::println (request, output, espresponse);
        http.begin(request);
        result = "";
        while (result != "200" && tries < 5){
        result = http.GET();
        ESPCOM::println (result, output, espresponse);
        tries++;
        }
        tries = 0;
        http.end();
        break;

functions etc. :

#include <ESP8266HTTPClient.h> // PERSONNAL MOD
HTTPClient http;
String request,result;
int tries;
unsigned char h2int(char c)
{
    if (c >= '0' && c <='9'){
        return((unsigned char)c - '0');
    }
    if (c >= 'a' && c <='f'){
        return((unsigned char)c - 'a' + 10);
    }
    if (c >= 'A' && c <='F'){
        return((unsigned char)c - 'A' + 10);
    }
    return(0);
}

String urldecode(String str)
{
    
    String encodedString="";
    char c;
    char code0;
    char code1;
    for (int i =0; i < str.length(); i++){
        c=str.charAt(i);
      if (c == '+'){
        encodedString+=' ';  
      }else if (c == '%') {
        i++;
        code0=str.charAt(i);
        i++;
        code1=str.charAt(i);
        c = (h2int(code0) << 4) | h2int(code1);
        encodedString+=c;
      } else{
        encodedString+=c;  
      }
      yield();
    }
   return encodedString;
}

knowing that two things must be taken care of:

• there must be no "%0A" meaning line break at the end of the encoded URL, otherwise http.GET() returns the error "-5".
• If you use several different URLs in a row, you may get a "-2" error. To overcome this problem I added up to 5 tries of the GET request, knowing that I never had two errors in a row :
  
  
  And if the link is bad for a GET request :
  

EDIT : I confirm that from the WEB interface this technique works. I need to test from the SD card as soon as I finish my print.

[luc-github]

well I suggested to use encode64 because it do not use any special char like % , also this does not need any change in webUI

so what I did :
I do not have any server so I used the jigsaw url, one from HTTPClient sample code

I have enabled the debug to see the decoded and the http code
So from PIO:

so with debug off

and from WebUI

Currently https is not supported and I cannot test in real case - so feel free to check - the latest version is 3.0.0.75