Documentation
Bitween documentation
How Bitween receives, validates, transforms, delivers and records every exchange, and how to run it in production. Written from the source code and kept in sync with the repository.
What Bitween is, its vocabulary, and how the pieces fit together.
Entry points, the exchange pipeline, adapters, mapping, brokers and databases.
- Exchange pipelineWhat happens to a message from arrival to result
- Entry pointsAPI gateways, bus gateways, scheduled jobs, aggregations and legacy entry points
- AdaptersThe adapter contract, every built-in adapter and its properties, custom adapters
Also: Mapping · Data sources · External brokers · Databases · Scheduling · Retries and alerts
Deploy, configure, secure and operate a Bitween instance.
- DeploymentDocker image, Helm chart, databases, storage and CI/CD
- ConfigurationEvery configuration key, runtime setting and Helm value
- SecuritySign-in, tokens, roles and permissions, partner keys, hardening, audit
Also: Operations · Admin UI
The REST API, adapter APIs and development setup.
- API referenceREST conventions and every endpoint
- Database Adapters: API ReferenceWhat bitween.db.oracle and bitween.db.postgresql expose, and how to configure them for the things people actually want to do with a database.
- Connecting Bitween to a database: a guide per engineWritten for a developer who knows SQL and has met a relational database before, but has not necessarily met this one. It assumes nothing about Bitween beyond the fact that you are pointing it at a…
Also: External bus providers · Development
Design notes
ProposalsProposals and plans written while features were designed. Not a description of current behaviour.
- Design documentsProposals and plans, not a description of current behaviour
- External Brokers: Data Sources, Provider Plugins, and Cluster ControlProposal. Written against an earlier branch. Shipped differently: resident serverless adapters instead of in-process plugins, and no cluster API, node registry or outbox.
- Provider Plan: RabbitMQ (full) and Kafka (connection & resource shape)Plan. RabbitMQ shipped in a smaller form. Kafka was not built.
- Provider Plan: Resident Database Adapters (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle)Plan with partial status notes, some of them out of date. Four engines, statements and the UI shipped. Explain, bulk load, push ingress and several metrics did not.
Overview
README.mdBitween is a self-hosted integration platform. It takes business documents in from partners, HTTP calls, message brokers, databases and scheduled pulls. It validates, transforms and delivers them, and keeps a searchable record of every exchange.
One .NET 10 service hosts everything: the REST API, the partner-facing gateway endpoints, background processing, the scheduler and the React admin UI.
These docs are written from the source code as of 11 September 2026. They replace the earlier README and
docs/pages, which described an older version of Bitween.
What Bitween does#
- Many ways in. Partners call an API gateway. Other systems publish to Bitween's bus, or to their own RabbitMQ or Amazon SQS broker. Scheduled jobs pull from HTTP APIs, S3, Azure Blob, SFTP/FTP, POP3 mailboxes and databases. Aggregations roll finished exchanges up on a schedule.
- One pipeline. Every message becomes an exchange that runs through the same stages: filter, map, deliver, route the response.
- Adapters for each stage. Built-in adapters cover HTTP, S3, Azure Blob, SFTP/FTP, POP3 and SMTP, plus a visual rules-based mapper for JSON and XML. Anything else can be a custom adapter that runs out of process.
- Long-lived connections. Data sources hold connections to RabbitMQ and Amazon SQS brokers and to PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle databases, so deliveries can publish messages or run SQL.
- Reliability built in. Retry policies match failures and retry them with a delay and a shared budget. Every exchange's retries form a chain you can follow. Exhausted budgets raise alerts, and notifiers report results.
- Operable. Queue health straight from RabbitMQ, data source health, schedule health, run history, receive attempts, a dashboard and an audit trail of every configuration change.
- Administered in the browser. Roles with fine-grained permissions, Microsoft sign-in, and settings and branding that change at runtime.
How it fits together#
flowchart LR
subgraph In[Entry points]
GW[API gateway]
BUS[Bus gateway]
JOB[Scheduled job]
AGG[Aggregation]
end
subgraph Core[Bitween service]
X[(Exchange)]
P[Filter, mapper, handler]
R[Result and retry policy]
end
EXT[(Customer broker or database)]
EXT --> BUS
EXT --> JOB
GW --> X
BUS --> X
JOB --> X
AGG --> X
X -->|work group queue| P --> R
P -->|delivery| OUT[Partner systems]
P -->|publish or SQL| EXT
R -->|notifiers and alerts| N[Handler adapters]
X -. files .-> S[(Object storage)]
R -. rows .-> DB[(Bitween database)]Requirements#
| Component | Supported |
|---|---|
| Build | .NET 10 SDK, Node 22 with Yarn for the admin UI |
| Database | PostgreSQL, SQL Server or MySQL 8 |
| Message broker | RabbitMQ, with the management plugin for queue health |
| Object storage | S3-compatible, Azure Blob Storage, Oracle Cloud Object Storage, or local disk in Development |
Quick start#
This runs Bitween locally against PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ and local-disk storage.
-
Start the dependencies.
docker run -d --name bitween-pg -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres postgres:16 docker run -d --name bitween-mq -p 5672:5672 -p 15672:15672 rabbitmq:3-management -
Build the admin UI into the web host's
wwwroot.cd SW.Bitween.Web/ClientApp yarn install yarn build cd ../.. -
Configure and run the service.
export ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Development export Bitween__DatabaseType=PgSql export ConnectionStrings__BitweenDb="Host=localhost;Port=5432;Database=bitween;Username=postgres;Password=postgres" export ConnectionStrings__RabbitMQ="amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672/" export Bitween__StorageProvider=Local export CloudFiles__BucketName=bitween export Token__Key="replace-with-a-random-string-of-at-least-32-chars" export Token__Issuer=bitween-local export Token__Audience=bitween-local export Bitween__RabbitMqManagementUrl=http://localhost:15672 export Bitween__RabbitMqManagementUsername=guest export Bitween__RabbitMqManagementPassword=guest dotnet run --project SW.Bitween.Web -
Open https://localhost:5000 and sign in as the seeded administrator.
[email protected] Mtm@dmin!2
The database schema is created on first start. Change the administrator password straight away, and work through the production checklist before exposing an instance. To use brokers or databases as data sources, see Data sources.
Repository layout#
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
SW.Bitween.Web |
ASP.NET Core host: startup, authentication, security headers, and the admin UI in ClientApp |
SW.Bitween.Api |
Domain model, database context, API handlers, exchange pipeline, jobs, settings and the data source supervisor |
SW.Bitween.NativeAdapters |
Built-in adapters and the rules-based mapper |
SW.Bitween.Adapters.Bus.RabbitMq, SW.Bitween.Adapters.Bus.Sqs |
Resident broker adapters |
SW.Bitween.Adapters.Db.* |
Resident database adapters and their shared core |
SW.Bitween.Sdk |
Shared models and the retry policy evaluator, published to NuGet as SimplyWorks.Bitween.Sdk |
SW.Bitween.PgSql, SW.Bitween.MySql, SW.Bitween.MsSql |
Provider-specific database contexts and migrations |
SW.Bitween.Sample* |
Sample custom adapters, including a resident handler |
SW.Bitween.UnitTests, SW.Bitween.IntegrationTests |
Test suites |
tools |
Development databases for trying the database adapters |
charts/default |
Helm chart |
Dockerfile |
Container image build |
License#
MIT. See LICENSE.