# Alternative of current ui nodes in the FlexDash dashboard

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/alternative-of-current-ui-nodes-in-the-flexdash-dashboard/58768>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [21 February 2022 20:10 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/alternative-of-current-ui-nodes-in-the-flexdash-dashboard/58768 "2022-02-21T20:10:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 26

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**Author:** ![tve](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/tve/32/59475_2.png) [@tve](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/tve)\
**Post date:** [5 March 2022 18:38 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/alternative-of-current-ui-nodes-in-the-flexdash-dashboard/58768/26 "2022-03-05T18:38:50Z")

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> [@TotallyInformation](#):
>
> No, I'm talking about how we define the data that might be sent using a msg to a front-end component. Or to a node that creates a front-end component. Depending on how the dashboard feature works.

FlexDash doesn't really has the notion of sending data to a widget/component 🤓. It uses reflection. You insert data into a data structure (a tree) on the Node-RED side. That is reflected to a tree in the front-end. A widget is then configured to look at specific nodes in that tree to get its values. The configuration itself is also in that tree.

You may recall that we had a long discussion about different models about a year ago 😉 and I'm always happy to continue that discussion and also to change FlexDash. So far the reflection model has worked well and I believe it solves some of the persistence/initialization/caching issues that Bart mentioned in the first post in this thread.

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