Tutorial: Build an event-driven app with Dapr and MQTT broker

2025-07-31

In this walkthrough, you deploy a Dapr application to the cluster. The Dapr application consumes simulated MQTT data published to MQTT broker, applies a windowing function, and then publishes the result back to MQTT broker. The published output represents how high volume data can be aggregated on the edge to reduce message frequency and size. The Dapr application is stateless, and uses the MQTT broker state store to cache past values needed for the window calculations.

The Dapr application performs the following steps:

Subscribes to the sensor/data topic for sensor data.
When data is receiving on the topic, it's published to the MQTT broker state store.
Every 10 seconds, it fetches the data from the state store and calculates the min, max, mean, median, and 75th percentile values on any sensor data timestamped in the last 30 seconds.
Data older than 30 seconds is expired from the state store.
The result is published to the sensor/window_data topic in JSON format.

Note

This tutorial disables Dapr CloudEvents which enables it to publish and subscribe using raw MQTT.

Prerequisites

Azure IoT Operations installed - Quickstart: Run Azure IoT Operations in GitHub Codespaces with K3s
MQTT broker Dapr components installed - Install MQTT broker Dapr Components

Deploy the Dapr application

At this point, you can deploy the Dapr application. Registering the components doesn't deploy the associated binary that is packaged in a container. To deploy the binary along with your application, you can use a Deployment to group the containerized Dapr application and the two components together.

To start, create a yaml file that uses the following definitions:

Component	Description
`volumes.mqtt-client-token`	The SAT used for authenticating the Dapr pluggable components with the MQTT broker and State Store
`volumes.aio-internal-ca-cert-chain`	The chain of trust to validate the MQTT broker TLS cert
`containers.mq-event-driven`	The prebuilt Dapr application container.

Save the following deployment yaml to a file named app.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: dapr-client
  namespace: azure-iot-operations
  annotations:
    aio-broker-auth/group: dapr-workload
---    
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: mq-event-driven-dapr
  namespace: azure-iot-operations
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: mq-event-driven-dapr
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: mq-event-driven-dapr
      annotations:
        dapr.io/enabled: "true"
        dapr.io/inject-pluggable-components: "true"
        dapr.io/app-id: "mq-event-driven-dapr"
        dapr.io/app-port: "6001"
        dapr.io/app-protocol: "grpc"
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: dapr-client

      volumes:
      # SAT token used to authenticate between Dapr and the MQTT broker
      - name: mqtt-client-token
        projected:
          sources:
            - serviceAccountToken:
                path: mqtt-client-token
                audience: aio-internal
                expirationSeconds: 86400

      # Certificate chain for Dapr to validate the MQTT broker
      - name: aio-ca-trust-bundle
        configMap:
          name: azure-iot-operations-aio-ca-trust-bundle

      containers:
      - name: mq-event-driven-dapr
        image: ghcr.io/azure-samples/explore-iot-operations/mq-event-driven-dapr:latest

Deploy the application by running the following command:
```
kubectl apply -f app.yaml
```

Confirm that the application deployed successfully. The pod should report all containers are ready after a short interval, as shown with the following command:

kubectl get pods -l app=mq-event-driven-dapr -n azure-iot-operations

With the following output:

NAME                         READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
mq-event-driven-dapr         3/3     Running             0          30s

Deploy the simulator

Simulate test data by deploying a Kubernetes workload. It simulates a sensor by sending sample temperature, vibration, and pressure readings periodically to the MQTT broker using an MQTT client on the sensor/data topic.

Deploy the simulator from the Explore IoT Operations repository:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/explore-iot-operations/main/tutorials/mq-event-driven-dapr/simulate-data.yaml

Confirm the simulator is running correctly:

kubectl logs deployment/mqtt-publisher-deployment -n azure-iot-operations -f

With the following output:

Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian stable InRelease [151 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian stable-updates InRelease [52.1 kB]
Get:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian-security stable-security InRelease [48.0 kB]
Get:4 http://deb.debian.org/debian stable/main amd64 Packages [8780 kB]
Get:5 http://deb.debian.org/debian stable-updates/main amd64 Packages [6668 B]
Get:6 http://deb.debian.org/debian-security stable-security/main amd64 Packages [101 kB]
Fetched 9139 kB in 3s (3570 kB/s)
...
Messages published in the last 10 seconds: 10
Messages published in the last 10 seconds: 10
Messages published in the last 10 seconds: 10

Deploy an MQTT client

To verify the MQTT bridge is working, deploy an MQTT client to the cluster.

In a new file named client.yaml, specify the client deployment:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: mqtt-client
  namespace: azure-iot-operations
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: mqtt-client
  namespace: azure-iot-operations
spec:
  serviceAccountName: mqtt-client
  containers:
  - image: alpine
    name: mqtt-client
    command: ["sh", "-c"]
    args: ["apk add mosquitto-clients mqttui && sleep infinity"]
    volumeMounts:
    - name: mqtt-client-token
      mountPath: /var/run/secrets/tokens
    - name: aio-ca-trust-bundle
      mountPath: /var/run/certs/aio-internal-ca-cert/
  volumes:
  - name: mqtt-client-token
    projected:
      sources:
      - serviceAccountToken:
          path: mqtt-client-token
          audience: aio-internal
          expirationSeconds: 86400
  - name: aio-ca-trust-bundle
    configMap:
      name: azure-iot-operations-aio-ca-trust-bundle

Apply the deployment file with kubectl:

kubectl apply -f client.yaml

Verify output:

pod/mqtt-client created

Verify the Dapr application output

Open a shell to the Mosquitto client pod:

kubectl exec --stdin --tty mqtt-client -n azure-iot-operations -- sh

Subscribe to the sensor/window_data topic to observe the published output from the Dapr application:
```
mosquitto_sub -L mqtt://aio-broker/sensor/window_data
```

Verify the application is outputting a sliding windows calculation for the various sensors every 10 seconds:

{
    "timestamp": "2023-11-16T21:59:53.939690+00:00",
    "window_size": 30,
    "temperature": {
        "min": 553.024,
        "max": 598.907,
        "mean": 576.4647857142858,
        "median": 577.4905,
        "75_per": 585.96125,
        "count": 28
    },
    "pressure": {
        "min": 290.605,
        "max": 299.781,
        "mean": 295.521,
        "median": 295.648,
        "75_per": 297.64050000000003,
        "count": 28
    },
    "vibration": {
        "min": 0.00124192,
        "max": 0.00491257,
        "mean": 0.0031171810714285715,
        "median": 0.003199235,
        "75_per": 0.0038769150000000003,
        "count": 28
    }
}

Optional - Create the Dapr application

This tutorial uses a prebuilt container of the Dapr application. If you would like to modify and build the code yourself, follow these steps:

Prerequisites

Docker - for building the application container
A Container registry - for hosting the application container

Build the application

Clone the Explore IoT Operations repository:

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/explore-iot-operations

Change to the Dapr tutorial directory:

cd explore-iot-operations/tutorials/mq-event-driven-dapr/src

Build the docker image:

docker build docker build . -t mq-event-driven-dapr

To consume the application in your Kubernetes cluster, you need to push the image to a container registry such as the Azure Container Registry. You could also push to a local container registry such as minikube or Docker.
```
docker tag mq-event-driven-dapr <container-alias>
docker push <container-alias>
```
Update your app.yaml to pull your newly created image.

Troubleshooting

If the application doesn't start or you see the containers in CrashLoopBackoff, the daprd container log often contains useful information.

Run the following command to view the logs for the daprd component:

kubectl logs -l app=mq-event-driven-dapr -n azure-iot-operations -c daprd

Next steps

Bridge MQTT data between MQTT broker and Azure Event Grid

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Tutorial: Build an event-driven app with Dapr and MQTT broker

Prerequisites

Deploy the Dapr application

Deploy the simulator

Deploy an MQTT client

Verify the Dapr application output

Optional - Create the Dapr application

Prerequisites

Build the application

Troubleshooting

Next steps

Feedback

Additional resources