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Bluetooth GATT Server

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This topic demonstrates how to use the Bluetooth Generic Attribute (GATT) Server APIs for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps.

Important

You must declare the "bluetooth" capability in Package.appxmanifest.

<Capabilities> <DeviceCapability Name="bluetooth" /> </Capabilities>

Important APIs

Overview

Windows usually operates in the client role. Nevertheless, many scenarios arise which require Windows to act as a Bluetooth LE GATT Server as well. Almost all the scenarios for IoT devices, along with most cross-platform BLE communication will require Windows to be a GATT Server. Additionally, sending notifications to nearby wearable devices has become a popular scenario that requires this technology as well.

Server operations will revolve around the Service Provider and the GattLocalCharacteristic. These two classes will provide the functionality needed to declare, implement and expose a hierarchy of data to a remote device.

Define the supported services

Your app may declare one or more services that will be published by Windows. Each service is uniquely identified by a UUID.

Attributes and UUIDs

Each service, characteristic and descriptor is defined by it's own unique 128-bit UUID.

The Windows APIs all use the term GUID, but the Bluetooth standard defines these as UUIDs. For our purposes, these two terms are interchangeable so we'll continue to use the term UUID.

If the attribute is standard and defined by the Bluetooth SIG-defined, it will also have a corresponding 16-bit short ID (for example, Battery Level UUID is 00002A19-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB and the short ID is 0x2A19). These standard UUIDs can be seen in GattServiceUuids and GattCharacteristicUuids.

If your app is implementing it's own custom service, a custom UUID will have to be generated. This is easily done in Visual Studio through Tools -> CreateGuid (use option 5 to get it in the "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-...xxxx" format). This uuid can now be used to declare new local services, characteristics or descriptors.

Restricted Services

The following Services are reserved by the system and cannot be published at this time:

  1. Device Information Service (DIS)
  2. Generic Attribute Profile Service (GATT)
  3. Generic Access Profile Service (GAP)
  4. Scan Parameters Service (SCP)

Attempting to create a blocked service will result in BluetoothError.DisabledByPolicy being returned from the call to CreateAsync.

Generated Attributes

The following descriptors are autogenerated by the system, based on the GattLocalCharacteristicParameters provided during creation of the characteristic:

  1. Client Characteristic Configuration (if the characteristic is marked as indicatable or notifiable).
  2. Characteristic User Description (if UserDescription property is set). See GattLocalCharacteristicParameters.UserDescription property for more info.
  3. Characteristic Format (one descriptor for each presentation format specified). See GattLocalCharacteristicParameters.PresentationFormats property for more info.
  4. Characteristic Aggregate Format (if more than one presentation format is specified). GattLocalCharacteristicParameters.See PresentationFormats property for more info.
  5. Characteristic Extended Properties (if the characteristic is marked with the extended properties bit).

The value of the Extended Properties descriptor is determined via the ReliableWrites and WritableAuxiliaries characteristic properties.

Attempting to create a reserved descriptor will result in an exception.

Note that broadcast is not supported at this time. Specifying the Broadcast GattCharacteristicProperty will result in an exception.

Build up the hierarchy of services and characteristics

The GattServiceProvider is used to create and advertise the root primary service definition. Each service requires it's own ServiceProvider object that takes in a GUID:

GattServiceProviderResult result = await GattServiceProvider.CreateAsync(uuid);

if (result.Error == BluetoothError.Success)
{
    serviceProvider = result.ServiceProvider;
    // 
}

Primary services are the top level of the GATT tree. Primary services contain characteristics as well as other services (called 'Included' or secondary services).

Now, populate the service with the required characteristics and descriptors:

GattLocalCharacteristicResult characteristicResult = await serviceProvider.Service.CreateCharacteristicAsync(uuid1, ReadParameters);
if (characteristicResult.Error != BluetoothError.Success)
{
    // An error occurred.
    return;
}
_readCharacteristic = characteristicResult.Characteristic;
_readCharacteristic.ReadRequested += ReadCharacteristic_ReadRequested;

characteristicResult = await serviceProvider.Service.CreateCharacteristicAsync(uuid2, WriteParameters);
if (characteristicResult.Error != BluetoothError.Success)
{
    // An error occurred.
    return;
}
_writeCharacteristic = characteristicResult.Characteristic;
_writeCharacteristic.WriteRequested += WriteCharacteristic_WriteRequested;

characteristicResult = await serviceProvider.Service.CreateCharacteristicAsync(uuid3, NotifyParameters);
if (characteristicResult.Error != BluetoothError.Success)
{
    // An error occurred.
    return;
}
_notifyCharacteristic = characteristicResult.Characteristic;
_notifyCharacteristic.SubscribedClientsChanged += SubscribedClientsChanged;

As shown above, this is also a good place to declare event handlers for the operations each characteristic supports. To respond to requests correctly, an app must defined and set an event handler for each request type the attribute supports. Failing to register a handler will result in the request being completed immediately with UnlikelyError by the system.

Constant characteristics

Sometimes, there are characteristic values that will not change during the course of the app's lifetime. In that case, it is advisable to declare a constant characteristic to prevent unnecessary app activation:

byte[] value = new byte[] {0x21};
var constantParameters = new GattLocalCharacteristicParameters
{
    CharacteristicProperties = (GattCharacteristicProperties.Read),
    StaticValue = value.AsBuffer(),
    ReadProtectionLevel = GattProtectionLevel.Plain,
};

var characteristicResult = await serviceProvider.Service.CreateCharacteristicAsync(uuid4, constantParameters);
if (characteristicResult.Error != BluetoothError.Success)
{
    // An error occurred.
    return;
}

Publish the service

Once the service has been fully defined, the next step is to publish support for the service. This informs the OS that the service should be returned when remote devices perform a service discovery. You will have to set two properties - IsDiscoverable and IsConnectable:

GattServiceProviderAdvertisingParameters advParameters = new GattServiceProviderAdvertisingParameters
{
    IsDiscoverable = true,
    IsConnectable = true
};
serviceProvider.StartAdvertising(advParameters);
  • IsDiscoverable: Advertises the friendly name to remote devices in the advertisement, making the device discoverable.
  • IsConnectable: Advertises a connectable advertisement for use in peripheral role.

When a service is both Discoverable and Connectable, the system will add the Service Uuid to the advertisement packet. There are only 31 bytes in the Advertisement packet and a 128-bit UUID takes up 16 of them!

Note that when a service is published in the foreground, an application must call StopAdvertising when the application suspends.

Respond to Read and Write requests

As we saw above while declaring the required characteristics, GattLocalCharacteristics have 3 types of events - ReadRequested, WriteRequested and SubscribedClientsChanged.

Read

When a remote device tries to read a value from a characteristic (and it's not a constant value), the ReadRequested event is called. The characteristic the read was called on as well as args (containing information about the remote device) is passed to the delegate:

characteristic.ReadRequested += Characteristic_ReadRequested;
// ... 

async void ReadCharacteristic_ReadRequested(GattLocalCharacteristic sender, GattReadRequestedEventArgs args)
{
    var deferral = args.GetDeferral();
    
    // Our familiar friend - DataWriter.
    var writer = new DataWriter();
    // populate writer w/ some data. 
    // ... 

    var request = await args.GetRequestAsync();
    request.RespondWithValue(writer.DetachBuffer());
    
    deferral.Complete();
}

Write

When a remote device tries to write a value to a characteristic, the WriteRequested event is called with details about the remote device, which characteristic to write to and the value itself:

characteristic.ReadRequested += Characteristic_ReadRequested;
// ...

async void WriteCharacteristic_WriteRequested(GattLocalCharacteristic sender, GattWriteRequestedEventArgs args)
{
    var deferral = args.GetDeferral();
    
    var request = await args.GetRequestAsync();
    var reader = DataReader.FromBuffer(request.Value);
    // Parse data as necessary. 

    if (request.Option == GattWriteOption.WriteWithResponse)
    {
        request.Respond();
    }
    
    deferral.Complete();
}

There are 2 types of Writes - with and without response. Use GattWriteOption (a property on the GattWriteRequest object) to figure out which type of write the remote device is performing.

Send notifications to subscribed clients

The most frequent of the GATT Server operations, notifications perform the critical function of pushing data to the remote devices. Sometimes, you'll want to notify all subscribed clients but other times you may want to pick which devices to send the new value to:

async void NotifyValue()
{
    var writer = new DataWriter();
    // Populate writer with data
    // ...
    
    await notifyCharacteristic.NotifyValueAsync(writer.DetachBuffer());
}

When a new device subscribes for notifications, the SubscribedClientsChanged event gets called:

characteristic.SubscribedClientsChanged += SubscribedClientsChanged;
// ...

void _notifyCharacteristic_SubscribedClientsChanged(GattLocalCharacteristic sender, object args)
{
    List<GattSubscribedClient> clients = sender.SubscribedClients;
    // Diff the new list of clients from a previously saved one 
    // to get which device has subscribed for notifications. 

    // You can also just validate that the list of clients is expected for this app.  
}

Note

Your application can get the maximum notification size for a particular client with the MaxNotificationSize property. Any data larger than the maximum size will be truncated by the system.

When you handle the GattLocalCharacteristic.SubscribedClientsChanged event, you can use the process described below to determine full information about the currently subscribed client devices: