Installing on win 2012 server R2

General
3

At last I have got this going.

For the benefit of others, this is what I did -

To understand it you must replace zzzzzzzzzzzz with your website url (this forum won't let me repeat url's)

I wanted it all to work below a subfolder of my site, so set up an iis site zzzzzzzzzzzz/xred

First just try 'hello world' in a .htm file to make sure iis is serving something at zzzzzzzzzzzz/xred/hello.htm

Then copy in hello.js and its web.config file from the iisnode examples and try zzzzzzzzzzzz/xred/hello.js to check iis + iisnode + node are all playing correctly together.

Now the hard part, to get node-red to work - this comes from an idea sparked by @TotallyInformation and the source of the azure implementation node-red-azure-webapp on github, and a lot of looking at its result in an azure site I created with it.

  1. The stock install as per nodered.org/docs/platforms/windows is no good to you; Install node-red again NOT as a global module, in, or close to your new website. I installed it in my /xred folder, so in a CMD box, something like:

cd C:\mywebsites\mysite\xred
npm install node-red

This creates a \xred\node_modules\ folder with all the node-red stuff in it.

  1. I also created a folder tree at C:\mywebsites\nodered\.node-red\ for my userDir but this may not be necessary if it makes it itself on first run, but I wasn't sure (see settings.js below.)

  2. \xred\server.js This is a sort of wrapper for node-red to run in

var express = require("express");
var RED=require('node-red');
var app= express();
var http=require('http');

const PORT=process.env.PORT; //||8000;

var server=http.createServer(app);
var settings=require("./settings.js");

RED.init(server,settings);

app.use(settings.httpAdminRoot,RED.httpAdmin);
app.use(settings.httpNodeRoot,RED.httpNode);
 
server.listen(settings.uiPort);
console.log(`listening port:${settings.uiPort}`);
RED.start();
  1. \xred\settings.js (only important settings shown, everything else to your taste)
module.exports = {
    httpAdminRoot:"/xred/",
    httpNodeRoot: "/xred/",
    userDir:"../../nodered/.node-red/",
    uiPort: process.env.PORT, // || 8000
    }

These 2 Root paths caused me a lot of hair pulling, if they're not exactly right then according to the logs node-red runs but all you get on screen is

cannot GET

which is something to do with express being finicky about paths.

  1. \xred\web.config More or less iisnode stock.
<!--
     This configuration file is required if iisnode is used to run node processes behind
     IIS or IIS Express.  For more information, visit:
     https://github.com/tjanczuk/iisnode/blob/master/src/samples/configuration/web.config
-->

<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <webSocket enabled="false" />
    <handlers>
      <!-- Indicates that the server.js file is a node.js site to be handled by the iisnode module -->
       <add name="iisnode" path="server.js" verb="*" modules="iisnode" /> 
	  <!--<add name="iisnode" path="hello.js" verb="*" modules="iisnode"/>-->
    </handlers>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <!-- Do not interfere with requests for node-inspector debugging-->
        <rule name="NodeInspector" patternSyntax="ECMAScript" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="server.js\/debug[\/]?" />
        </rule> 

        <!-- First we consider whether the incoming URL matches a physical file in the /public folder -->
        <rule name="StaticContent">
          <action type="Rewrite" url="public{PATH_INFO}" />
        </rule>

        <!-- All other URLs are mapped to the node.js site entry point-->
        <rule name="DynamicContent">
          <conditions>
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="True" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="server.js" />
        </rule>
      </rules> 
    </rewrite>
    
    <!-- 'bin' directory has no special meaning in node.js and apps can be placed in it -->
    <security>
      <requestFiltering>
        <hiddenSegments>
          <remove segment="bin" />
        </hiddenSegments>
      </requestFiltering>
    </security>

    <!-- Make sure error responses are left untouched -->
    <httpErrors existingResponse="PassThrough" />

    <!--
      You can control how Node is hosted within IIS using the following options:
      See iisnode on github for a full list of options
    -->
    <iisnode watchedFiles="web.config;*.js" loggingEnabled="true" logDirectory="iisnode" debuggingEnabled="true" />
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>
  1. Now you should be able to navigate to www.mysite.com/xred and node-red will start.

If it says

Not started

I think this means it is re-starting after having detected a change in one of your iisnode watchedFiles , so just wait a bit and refresh the page - bob should be your uncle :grinning:

I didn't get the special iisnode debug feature working as in zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz/xred/hello.js/debug but it didn't work for me in the stock iisnode examples either - you just get a lot of uncaught syntax errors.

Protect your mode-red server with a password at least

iisnode exposes a folder zzzzzzzzzzzzzz/xred/iisnode/ with useful debug info but obviously rather insecure. The recommendation is to change this folder name in iisnode settings to something very cryptic like a uuid

Richard