# Need help with loading Node-RED without backend

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/need-help-with-loading-node-red-without-backend/52183>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [13 October 2021 22:47 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/need-help-with-loading-node-red-without-backend/52183 "2021-10-13T22:47:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![shrickus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/shrickus/32/517_2.png) [@shrickus](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/shrickus)\
**Post date:** [15 October 2021 02:02 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/need-help-with-loading-node-red-without-backend/52183/2 "2021-10-15T02:02:19Z")

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Hi Matt,

I may have some answers that will help, based upon some work I did years ago and [discussed in this thread](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/re-purpose-the-flow-editor-for-other-flow-like-data-editing/1509/4).

Essentially, I needed to launch the Node-RED editor for multiple people, with url params that would redirect the editor to pull the flows.json data from a parameterized rest api (instead of the `/admin/flows` api using the local flows.jsp file). The net effect is that the full editor runs as-designed, but the actual runtime uses an "empty" flow. This way, the editor can be used as a flow drawing tool, and deployed changes are POSTed back to the external rest api (e.g. saved in a remote database).

So, as long as you don't need any functional back-end flows running, it works perfectly -- and since the server runtime is "empty", there is no need to worry about multiple user logins -- each user that loads the editor pulls their own flows directly into the editor... pretty cool, although not for most use cases!

Steve

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