Function status - a plea likely to be treated with scorn

General
1

Increasingly I find myself using the status display in the function node to display info when developing - mainly because I want the info on one screen and the debug tab is busy with bugs and other items. The "text" item in the function node is great but for me would be better if I could use
to break the output up over a couple of lines... if instead of keyword text I could use keyword html, I could do that and more (like choosing text colour or bold etc). I realise this is likely to be considered heresy but shy bairns get nowt as we say in Northumberland.

2

Well, at least you are not alone...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/node-red/status$20AND$20author$3Ame/node-red/y69PkTHmMc4

3

Always worth an ask... but no - the editor is still not a dashboard :slight_smile:

4

I treat the dashboard as something for an end user - and thanks to the RGB node not being very good - still end up using Blynk. Neither are of any use when you are sitting developing stuff and the debug console is way too general. Well, I tried.

5

@scargill as you can see this isn't the first time this has come up. It isn't something we plan to do as it risks becoming unmanageable if nodes start to abuse it.

But we do hear the feedback - so whilst this particular solution may not be the right one from our perspective, we do acknowledge there's a gap here that the current Debug sidebar doesn't satisfy. So whether there's something within the bounds of the Debug node and sidebar that could be done here would be worth exploring.

6

Thanks Nick. To me, dashboard is for watching when you are done developing - or for some permitted person to watch without fear of them messing up the code. For me as the developer, I'm looking to be able to monitor stuff and perhaps tinker. Debug does that but crudely. Function node is the alternative but would be helped by some formatting. I know I'm onto a loser here but I can but try.

7

In the past, I've created my own debug output web page for this.

Also, my own nodes have a variety of debug logging levels and I use Winston if I need to separate out the node's logs from Node-RED's log (which I typically do for more complex nodes). Use tail or a good IDE to be able to continuously view updates to the log files.

Finally, there is the ability to use something like VScode's debugging tools as I've indicated in the past. This lets you pause a running Node-RED session and lets you dig into the function chain and examine variables in-flight - great when you have to debug someone elses node.

8

A suggestion to consider... add an optional detail parameter to the status object (or what ever name makes sense), and if the detail parameter is there ... treat it as hover pop-up on the status (or show a more icon that opens up the details or what ever works best in the context of the UI)

this.status({
  fill:"green",
  shape:"dot",
  text:"connected", 
  detail:"Connected to <a href='serverx'>serverx</a>, at <b>2:43</b> via protocal yyy"
});
3 Likes
9

Now you remind me, yes I remember (not well enough) your debug pages... I'm looking for something to use while looking at and modifying my flows, pref in the same page, I like DustinW's idea, LOVE it in fact. Those who don't want this could ignore "detail"

10

Not necessarily against Dustin's idea though it does introduce further scope creep on the status feature. We should also remember that most Node-RED users aren't node developers.

Anyway, I would anticipate that Nick probably has a lot of things on the backlog so you might want to use something that already works.