Best practices for sending IoT device command over MQTT?

Question

I'm finding it oddly difficult to find a straightforward example,  of how best to handle controlling an IoT device  over MQTT.
Best I've found so far in official AWS docs, is
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/iot-lens/device-commands.html
but that one goes off and basically says (use Device Shadow).

I'd prefer to do it myself directly over MQTT.
.. If I can find code to point the way for me?

FYI, I'm using Python.

I did also find
https://iotatlas.net/en/implementations/aws/command/command1/

It mentions (you probably want to use a transaction ID), but then doesnt show how that would be handled in the code :(

Edit: I dont just need to "send" the command. I need to have the status of the command properly handled, in a robust manner.

Answer

Hi - Thanks for reaching out. I would say start with this whitepaper to follow a design pattern https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/designing-mqtt-topics-aws-iot-core/mqtt-design-best-practices.html

Then you can look into [Tutorial: Connecting a device to AWS IoT Core by using the AWS IoT Device SDK](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/sdk-tutorials.html). It uses MQTT as an example with Python.

Best practices for sending IoT device command over MQTT?

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