Floodlight provides a PacketStreamer service to help developers retrieve a selected subset of the OpenFlow messages exchanged between the controller and the switches. The service is provided through a java Thrift server, started separately from floodlight.
If you are running floodlight VM, the PacketStreamerServer is started as a service, just like floodlight is, at boot time. In this case, to utilize the service, you just need to follow the REST API example at the Packet Streamer (Dev) REST API page.
If you are running floodlight on your own host, e.g., from eclipse, then you'd need to:
java -cp <full path to floodlight.jar> net.floodlightcontroller.packetstreamer.PacketStreamerServer |
For more information, refer to the Packet Streamer (Dev) REST API page.