Luup Secure Plugins
Overview
MiOS has a secure way of provisioning plugins, which will generally be done for non-free applications. This mechanism can be used equally well for paid-for external apps that communicate with Vera, like a cell phone control, by creating an associated plugin for the app, even if the plugin doesn't do anything. The process of creating the plugin is no different than normal.
A provisioned plugin contains 3 fields of data: 'from' and 'to' which are date/time's, and 'limits' which is a free form text field that can be used by the plugin or external app to determine what functionality can be provided. These 3 fields exist both for the plugin itself, and for devices that use the plugin. When registering your app with MiOS you specify what the default values are if a user first installs your plugin without paying for anything. For example, consider that you have a plugin that monitors traffic conditions and costs $3/year to monitor local traffic and $6/year to monitor nation traffic and each homeowner has a 14 day free trial of the plugin, and that the limit code for the trial period is "trial" and for the $3 app is "local" and for the $6 app is "national" or $20 for national lifetime. You would specify with your MiOS Market representative that the default time period is 14 days and the default limit code is "trial". When the user installs the app, the plugin will have provision data where 'from' is the date he installed the plugin, 'to' is 14 days later, and 'limit' is "trial". When the customer pays the $3 or $6 the 'to' field will change to 1 year and the 'limit' will change also, when he pays $20, the 'to' field will become empty.
Some plugins create devices which may require provisioning of each device in addition to or instead of the provisioning for the main plugin. For example, a cell phone app may have a price of $10 for the first cell phone and $2 for each additional one. In this case, unlike the traffic example which only created a plugin entry, a device entry will be created for each phone and provision from/to/limit fields will exist for each phone as well as each device. Again, there could be a free trial period which uses the 'limit' code, and the first phone could use the 'included' code, and the subsequent phones could have 'extra' limit code. The limit codes are entirely free-form and it's up to you to decide what they mean.
The provisioning process itself is done by automated systems, contact MiOS to setup an account for payment and establish the terms of provisioning.
To retrieve the provisioning status of your plugin request the provisioning info as an lu request, like: http://ip:3480/data_request?id=lu_provision&PluginNum=x&DeviceNum=y. Note DeviceNum is optional, and whether specified or not, you'll receive in json format the all the provisioning info for the plugin and any associated devices. If DeviceNum is specified the encryption key for the device will be used to encrypt the return value, rather than using the key for the plugin itself. Encryption is optional (see section below). The format of lu_provision is:
{
"AllowMultiple": 1,
"Title": "Test Secure Plugin",
"Provision": {
"from": "1270155180",
"to": "1272697200",
"limits": "trial",
"Devices": [
{
"from": "1272697200",
"to": "1272783600",
"limits": "trial",
"device_num": "2",
"altid": "2135551212"
},
{
"limits": "",
"device_num": "8",
"altid": "3105001000"
}
]
},
"Version": "0.50",
"id": 144,
}
Note this means the plugin itself has a provision from 1270155180 to 1272697200 (unix timestamp) with limit "trial", and the 2 devices which are associated with the plugin have their own provision data.
