Creating a node with a drop down menu

Developing Nodes
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Would anyone have any advice for how to start researching on how to create a Node that someone could install and pull out of the pallet?

I understand the basics at a high level of installing a package locally with an npm install with a package.json file. But that's about it, like I think there is an html file that needs to be included too?

Is there any boiler plate stuff someone could use for this process? What I am envisioning hopefully this doesn't sound silly but like a Node or widget I could pull out of the pallet that has a drop down menu with selectable features.

To make a long story short to get data from BACnet building automation systems, the Python BACnet stacks are real good/supported/mature so I created a web app that can run along side of Node Red.

Now I am experimenting with just using python-shell where I can pretty much do the same thing without having to use an entire web app & rest API.

The learning curve for learning node is steep, but hoping to learn how to make a Node or some sort of widget that can be eventually published to npm with a drop down menu the community can use for BACnet where under the hood Python BACnet stacks are being used.

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Developing a node for install via NPM is not terribly difficult and there are lots of them on github to look at and follow.

Personally, I use VSCode for my development environment and the best place to start is the docs: Creating your first node : Node-RED

When you have something working, you would publish your node to npm using npm publish then lastly you would submit it for inclusion on the flows site

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Cool thanks, how does one define a node that has a drop down menu for a range of selectable features? Is this defined in the HTML file? Would you know of an example to look at?

For what I am envisioning at least for BACnet 3 choices:

  • A dropdown for a BACnet read or write or release

  • An input box for a BACnet device address

  • A dropdown menu for an object type analogInput or analogValue or binaryOutput or binaryValue

  • An input box for point address

This is the basics of what is filtered down into the Python BACnet stack to perform a request on the BACnet network.

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These are all very basic HTML type things (drop down / input / etc) - read up on HTML and follow the guide i linked to.

The best advice I can give you is look at other nodes and when you find something similar then go to its source code.

This source node-red-contrib-omron-fins has may of these features e.g...
image

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