Find+ — advanced search sidebar for the Node-RED editor

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Hi all,

I use Node-RED extensively for a large personal home-automation project.

As the project grew, the limitations of the built-in search became increasingly noticeable. Finding a specific value across many flows, node properties and thousands of lines of Function code can produce a large number of loosely related results, making it difficult to identify the exact occurrence being searched for.

This is particularly noticeable when searching for:

  • exact numeric values;

  • case-sensitive text;

  • complete words or phrases;

  • recurring code patterns;

  • values limited to a specific flow or node type.

For example, searching for 810 may also return values such as 1810 and 8100, even when the actual numeric value 810 is the only relevant result.

Find+ was created to provide a more precise and practical search tool for large Node-RED projects.

It is an editor plug-in that adds an independent advanced-search sidebar with exact-number, case-sensitive, whole-word and regular-expression searches, together with filters, grouped results and direct navigation between matching nodes.

Find+ does not replace or modify the built-in Node-RED search. It simply adds an alternative search tool to the editor sidebar.

4.1.11

search4
search4319×870 19.7 KB

5.0.1

search5
search5340×852 20.4 KB

Main features

  • Search node properties and Function node source code
  • Exact-number search
  • Case-sensitive search
  • Whole-word search
  • Regular expressions
  • Restrict results to the current flow
  • Filter by node type using type:...
  • Optionally include configuration nodes
  • Display the matching property and line number
  • Reveal a node without closing the Find+ sidebar
  • Light and dark theme support

Search examples

alarm
"exact phrase"
case:Echo
word:camera
num:810
type:function alarm
flow:current alarm
re:id\s*:\s*810

Prefixes can also be combined:

type:function flow:current case:Echo

Compatibility

Find+ has currently been tested with:

  • Node-RED 4.1.11
  • Node-RED 5.0.1

It adds no runtime nodes and does not participate in message processing. Searches are performed locally in the browser against the flow model already loaded by the Node-RED editor.

Installation

For now, Find+ is distributed through GitHub rather than npm or the Node-RED Flow Library.

Repository:

Download the .tgz file from the GitHub Releases page:

Then install it on the machine running Node-RED:

cd ~/.node-red
npm install /actual/path/node-red-plugin-advanced-search-0.4.1.tgz

Replace /actual/path/ with the real directory containing the downloaded file.

Restart Node-RED:

node-red-restart

or, depending on the installation:

sudo systemctl restart nodered

Finally, reload the editor with Ctrl+F5. A Find+ tab should appear in the sidebar.

Project status

This is still an experimental project.

Some of the editor APIs used to read the loaded node model and reveal nodes are not all formally documented as stable public APIs, so future Node-RED versions may require compatibility updates.

I would be interested in feedback, particularly from users with:

  • large flows;
  • different browsers;
  • other Node-RED 4.x or 5.x versions;
  • unusual node or property structures.

Reproducible problems and suggestions can be submitted through GitHub Issues.

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