Newbie questions

General
1

I'm struggling with two very basic concepts.

  1. I need to understand looping. I can see how to do this within a function node, but I want to repeat a set of nodes (slightly changing the parameters). If I used an Inject node set to repeat every second, how can I tell it to stop, after x times, or when a condition is matched?

  2. I am aiming to have an app running from (probably) a windows scheduled batch file. After developing in Node-red, can I somehow package it up, so it can run independently? I have read that you can start node-red with a named flow, but I'm not sure how to export/save a flow, so that this can be specifically run. It seems like every flow in my node-red system that has an inject node set to automatic starts running, even though only one is named.

2

You can’t stop an inject node, but you could have a counter in a function node that stops sending a message forward after a certain number of times.

You can’t package flows to run independently.

“It seems like every flow in my node-red system that has an inject node set to automatic starts running, even though only one is named.”
You need to explain this in more detail

3

That means that you can specify a flow file when when you start node-red, not an individual flow tab in a file. Unfortunately the word 'flow' is rather overloaded in node-red.

4

Also worth checking on flows.nodered.org for flows you can import

5

There are many ways to manage looping. If you gave a bit more information about your application it may help to narrow those down.

6

ukmoose many thanks for your reply.

To test how it works, I have two flows named 'RM' and 'fake' They each have an inject node set to automatic after 1 sec and 2 secs, and each link to a file output that appends to the same file with a simple message saying which flow 'This is RM' or 'This is 'Fake'.

When I click DEPLOY, Both flows append to the file without any further user action.

I'd now like to run it from the command line, so that only RM fires.

I tried 'node-red RM' as a named flow (and node-red RM.json) but this seems to want to create a new flow.

My reasons for this are that in my node-red system I will have lots of flows, but would like to isolate just one for running from the command line.

7

You can disable flows on a tab by clicking the tab and changing the status from enable to disabled.

But you can't choose a subset of flows to run from the command line.

8

Thanks for explaining that Colin, it makes perfect sense. I envisage having a very messy node-red environment (the default flow file with lots of tabs with half written code) but would like to maintain a very pure 'production' flow file for the successful flow. I assume the way to do this is to start node red with two separately named flow files.

9

That's really helpful. I promise to get better at this!

10

You might also look at the Projects feature. I think it could do what you want without having to re-start Node-RED.