ESP-NETIF Custom I/O Driver

This section outlines implementing a new I/O driver with ESP-NETIF connection capabilities.

By convention, the I/O driver has to register itself as an ESP-NETIF driver, and thus holds a dependency on ESP-NETIF component and is responsible for providing data path functions, post-attach callback and in most cases, also default event handlers to define network interface actions based on driver's lifecycle transitions.

Packet Input/Output

According to the diagram shown in the ESP-NETIF Architecture part, the following three API functions for the packet data path must be defined for connecting with ESP-NETIF:

• esp_netif_transmit()

• esp_netif_free_rx_buffer()

• esp_netif_receive()

The first two functions for transmitting and freeing the rx buffer are provided as callbacks, i.e., they get called from ESP-NETIF (and its underlying TCP/IP stack) and I/O driver provides their implementation.

The receiving function on the other hand gets called from the I/O driver, so that the driver's code simply calls esp_netif_receive() on a new data received event.

Post Attach Callback

A final part of the network interface initialization consists of attaching the ESP-NETIF instance to the I/O driver, by means of calling the following API:

esp_err_t esp_netif_attach(esp_netif_t *esp_netif, esp_netif_iodriver_handle driver_handle);

It is assumed that the esp_netif_iodriver_handle is a pointer to driver's object, a struct derived from struct esp_netif_driver_base_s, so that the first member of I/O driver structure must be this base structure with pointers to:

• post-attach function callback

• related ESP-NETIF instance

As a result, the I/O driver has to create an instance of the struct per below:

typedef struct my_netif_driver_s {
        esp_netif_driver_base_t base;           /*!< base structure reserved as esp-netif driver */
        driver_impl             *h;             /*!< handle of driver implementation */
    } my_netif_driver_t;

with actual values of my_netif_driver_t::base.post_attach and the actual drivers handle my_netif_driver_t::h.

So when the esp_netif_attach() gets called from the initialization code, the post-attach callback from I/O driver's code gets executed to mutually register callbacks between ESP-NETIF and I/O driver instances. Typically the driver is started as well in the post-attach callback. An example of a simple post-attach callback is outlined below:

static esp_err_t my_post_attach_start(esp_netif_t * esp_netif, void * args)
{
    my_netif_driver_t *driver = args;
    const esp_netif_driver_ifconfig_t driver_ifconfig = {
            .driver_free_rx_buffer = my_free_rx_buf,
            .transmit = my_transmit,
            .handle = driver->driver_impl
    };
    driver->base.netif = esp_netif;
    ESP_ERROR_CHECK(esp_netif_set_driver_config(esp_netif, &driver_ifconfig));
    my_driver_start(driver->driver_impl);
    return ESP_OK;
}

Default Handlers

I/O drivers also typically provide default definitions of lifecycle behavior of related network interfaces based on state transitions of I/O drivers. For example driver start -> network start , etc.

An example of such a default handler is provided below:

esp_err_t my_driver_netif_set_default_handlers(my_netif_driver_t *driver, esp_netif_t * esp_netif)
{
    driver_set_event_handler(driver->driver_impl, esp_netif_action_start, MY_DRV_EVENT_START, esp_netif);
    driver_set_event_handler(driver->driver_impl, esp_netif_action_stop, MY_DRV_EVENT_STOP, esp_netif);
    return ESP_OK;
}

Network Stack Connection

The packet data path functions for transmitting and freeing the rx buffer (defined in the I/O driver) are called from the ESP-NETIF, specifically from its TCP/IP stack connecting layer.

Note that ESP-IDF provides several network stack configurations for the most common network interfaces, such as for the Wi-Fi station or Ethernet. These configurations are defined in esp_netif/include/esp_netif_defaults.h and should be sufficient for most network drivers. In rare cases, expert users might want to define custom lwIP based interface layers; it is possible, but an explicit dependency to lwIP needs to be set.

The following API reference outlines these network stack interaction with the ESP-NETIF:

Header File

• components/esp_netif/include/esp_netif_net_stack.h

• This header file can be included with:

#include "esp_netif_net_stack.h"

• This header file is a part of the API provided by the esp_netif component. To declare that your component depends on esp_netif, add the following to your CMakeLists.txt:

REQUIRES esp_netif

or

>     PRIV_REQUIRES esp_netif