Node.send() is not working always

Developing Nodes
1

My case is similar to that of Node.send not always works - Developing Nodes - Node-RED Forum (nodered.org). I did not understand what cleanup I should do.

I am trying to build a custom Kafka Consumer node where I am using a function which gets triggered every time a message is received ( Consuming Messages · KafkaJS)

When I start the Node-RED for the first time, everything works fine. Sometimes when I redeploy(Hit the deploy button in UI), the node.send in the eachMessage stops working even If I was able to get logs above and below the node.send(once stopped it won't work even If I redeploy, unless I restart the whole app). Unfortunately, I am unable to reproduce this consistently. Sometimes it works for even If I redeploy 10 times. sometimes 1 redeploy will be enough to break it.

An example of my code, removed any sensitive stuff, so might not work for you if you try to execute.

const { Kafka } = require("kafkajs");
module.exports = function (RED) {
    function consumeKafkaMessage(config) {
        let consumer;
        RED.nodes.createNode(this, config);
        var node = this;
        node.init = async function(){
            try{
                let topic =  config.topic;
                let fromBegining =  config.fromBegining;
                let groupId =  config.groupId;
                
                const client = new Kafka({ 
                    brokers: 'brokers....', 
                    connectionTimeout: 3000
                })
                let consumerOptions = {} ;
                consumerOptions.topic = topic;
                consumerOptions.fromBegining = fromBegining;
                
                
                consumer = client.consumer({ groupId: groupId, allowAutoTopicCreation:false });
                await consumer.connect()
                let fromBegining = consumerOptions.fromBegining ? consumerOptions.fromBegining : true
                await this.subscribe(consumer, consumerOptions.topic, fromBegining)
                
                consumer.run({
                    eachMessage: async ({ topic, partition, message }) => {
                        let messageToSend = { "payload" : message.value.toString() }
                        node.send([null, messageToSend])
                        console.log("Logging messageToSend has msg id added to it.")
                    },
                }).catch((error) => {
                    node.send([{payload : error}, null])
                });
            }catch(error){
                node.send([{payload : error}, null])
            }
        }

       node.on('close', async function(){
            try{
                console.log(`Closing the Node-RED Kafka consumer`);
                consumer.disconnect();
            }catch(error){
                console.log(error)
            }
        })
        node.init();
    }
    RED.nodes.registerType("kafka_consumer_node", consumeKafkaMessage);
}
2

When a node is deployed, it gets destroyed/recreated.
Therefore you should handle .on('close'

https://nodered.org/docs/creating-nodes/node-js#closing-the-node

this.on('close', function(removed, done) {
    if (removed) {
        // This node has been disabled/deleted - might wanna do something special?
    } else {
        // This node is being restarted - might wanna do something else?
    }
    // but normally...
    doCleanup_unsubscribe_closeConnections_EtcEtcEtc(function() {
        done()
    });
});
3

Thank you for your prompt reply, I have edited my code as you suggested i.e added node.on('close') but unfortunately the issue still persists. I was not clear in my post earlier, the consumer itself is receiving messages every time I redeploy, but the node.send is not passing the message to the next node sometimes.(When the issue starts redeploys won't help me anymore, I need to restart the whole app).

Is there anything I should additionally do in node.on('close') function apart from stopping my kafka consumers?

Let me know, if anything I said is confusing.

4

the only way this will occur is if the msg is null or undefined.

Have you added console.logs to check this is not happening?

5

Hello, I think I solved the issue, the message was not null or undefined(I logged it), but it was indeed closing the consumers properly ig.(not 100% sure, I tried redeploying 20-25 times, everything is working fine, I should test it more rigorously though.)

For reference to others, I modified it to

node.on('close', function(done){
    try{
        new Promise(async (resolve,reject)=>{
            await consumer.disconnect();
            resolve();
        })
        .then(()=>{
            done();
        })
        .catch((error)=>{
            done()
        })
        
    }catch(error){
    }
})

Thank you so much for your time @Steve-Mcl!!

But I would like to know, is there a reason why not closing consumers properly is affecting node.send while the consumer itself is delivering the message correctly every time?