I am very new to node-red, but think its very powerful. I would like to build a little work incident information dashboard that calls a bunch of REST APIs, then aggregates the data then makes sure to highlight the tasks that I should know about or even act upon.
I would love to do this in Windows but would be nice to have this running on Adroid too?
What would I have to look out for to make my flow cross-platform capable?
Is node-red even the right tool for this?
Can a flow be created then "deployed" to a different user/platform? So far I have only worked in the editor so have not figured out how to do that. I know I can save and flow, but there are modules needed etc to make a certain flow really run. Can this be all included in a single installation package?
I know about the debug node. However, how can I really debug stuff? I am using the http node and its not getting stuff back, so how to go about debugging this?
When you say you want it running on multiple platforms do you mean that you need node-red itself running on those platforms or do you mean that you want the user interface to be available on multiple platforms? As node-red uses a browsers for its UI you can have a user interface driven by the server but viewable on multiple devices.
Some users may need to run this on Windows. Some other users may want to use this on Raspberry Pi, as that would not require a PC to be on. Its just different conveniences.
JavaScript and therefore node-red is cross platform. A flow created on a pi will run exactly* the same on windows (* baring the obvious like pi specific nodes)
There isn't much (in my experience) node-red can't do.
What you're describing is more than possible.
Yup. Relates to q1.
Used in conjunction with other tools like postman or even devtools (F12) there is no reason you can't figure stuff out.
At this point in time there is no step debug or breakpoints but, when you balance it out with the toolbox node-red gives you, the speed of prototyping (and final solutions) you get nicely balances the situation.
By the time you have implemented a few solutions you will begin to grasp more of the concepts and capabilities and I am confident, if you give it a reasonable shot, you will come to realise the benefits far outweigh the shortcomings (effort Vs benefit is quite positive imo)
In time, I believe there will be additional capabilities (in node-red) to assist with debugging but as I've stated already, the benefits of fast prototyping etc give you such a head start that it's a fair balance.
Hopefully this rambling gives you the confidence to move forward and invest some time in the node-red environment.
Ps, read the documentation. It won't take too long (like 20 mins) but there are some real golden nugget tips in there. Especially the bit about msg and debug.
Not quite correct Steve. You can do these as long as you are working with a decent code editor such as VScode. I've had to delve into these murky waters from time-to-time.
