Global Environment Variables credentials are lost

[dzm]

(Somewhat related to:
0. Reading global environment variable from function node

1. Flow Environment credentials are lost )

Hello. I am having trouble reliably using credential values saved as Global Environment Variables.
First I had the same issue as in (0), where credentials wouldn't be returned at all. Then I've upgraded to Node-RED v3.1.3 and now I am seeing behaviour similar to (1), just there it was happening with flow env variables.

Steps to reproduce:

• add some global variables, set some of them to 'credential' type (
  
  
  ),
• add test flow where inject node fills msg properties with values from the global vars (
  
  
  ) — everything is working fine,
• add another plaintext global variable (
  
  
  ),
• add the new variable to the test flow (
  
  
  ) — the global credential variable is lost and has value __PWRD__.

[ralphwetzel]

Nothing has changed since

Reading global environment variable from function node

I had some time to dig around in the code base: Looks like you fell over an issue in the global env management for credential types. This needs to be fixed; as it is currently, you won't get the credentials value back. I propose you raise an issue in the NR GitHub repo!

Again: I propose you raise an issue in the NR GitHub repo!

[dzm]

I thought this was closed in #4396 to be included in 3.1.1 release.
This was the PR.

And you are right that such bugs should probably be reported in the GitHub repo and not posted here as discussions.

[dzm]

Reported as #4508.

[ralphwetzel]

@ralphwetzel

Nothing has changed since

@dzm

I thought this was closed in #4396 to be included in 3.1.1 release.

Thank you for this heads-up. Indeed, it seems to be addressed...

@dzm

the global credential variable is lost and has value __PWRD__

This yet looks to be intentional: The credential shouldn't be lost. It's in the nature of (password like) credentials that - once they pass from the client to the runtime - they'll never make their way back.
Thus you cannot debug them (you'll get __PWRD__ instead), but you should be able to use them.
Have you tried?

[dzm]

Should we move this discussion to GitHub? A contributor has already responded with what I think is an explanation that supports my claim.

Thus you cannot debug them (you'll get __PWRD__ instead), but you should be able to use them.

I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to use them. In a 'change' or 'function' node I should be able to access the credential value, right? Then I should be able to write that value as a plain text value to msg to be printed to debug.