C++ Get Started

Overview

This tutorial describes how to get started using Gazebo Msgs with C++.

We will run through a simple example that populates a message and prints it. Start by creating a bare-bones main file using the editor of your choice.

int main()
{
  return 0;
}

The easiest way to include Gazebo Msgs is through the gz/msgs.hh header file. Alternatively, you can include only the header files you need. For this example, we'll take the short and easy approach.

At this point your main file should look like

#include <gz/msgs.hh>
 
int main()
{
  return 0;
}

Now let's create a message to store three points with arbitrary values. We will use the gz::msgs::Vector3 class to store these points and the function DebugString() to print the content on the terminal.

#include <iostream>
#include <gz/msgs.hh>
 
int main()
{
  gz::msgs::Vector3d point1;
  point1.set_x(1);
  point1.set_y(3);
  point1.set_z(5);
  gz::msgs::Vector3d point2;
  point2.set_x(2);
  point2.set_y(4);
  point2.set_z(6);
 
  std::cout << "Point1:\n" << point1.DebugString() << std::endl;
  std::cout << "Point2:\n" << point2.DebugString() << std::endl;
 
  return 0;
}

To compile the code create a CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.22.1 FATAL_ERROR)
project(gz-msgs-example)
 
# Find the Gazebo msgs library
find_package(gz-msgs11 QUIET REQUIRED)
 
add_executable(gz-msgs-example main.cc)
target_link_libraries(gz-msgs-example ${GZ-MSGS_LIBRARIES})

Let's start by compiling the examples:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

Run the example, you should see something like:

Point1:
x: 1
y: 3
z: 5
 
Point2:
x: 2
y: 4
z: 6