Portable Node-RED v2.1.3

[mdkrieg]

Today I needed a portable version of Node-RED to do something on a machine that I don't want to install Node onto and was pretty pleased with the result I got using electron-forge.

I know others have accomplished this before but I thought this came out pretty clean so I decided to share.

Download: nodered-portable download | SourceForge.net (Windows x64)

Github: GitHub - mdkrieg/nodered-portable: Node-RED Portable Version via Electron

Hope you find this as useful as I did,
Cheers!

[cymplecy]

Have you used standard 1880 port or switched to using another one?

[mdkrieg]

Port 50820, picked by a random number generator. Changed it to not collide if already running node-red on port 1880. Ideally I'd like to find a way to customize this at launch.

[cymplecy]

Apart from the exercise any reason not to use Node-RED desktop?

Node-RED Desktop

[jbudd]

Is this portable in the same sense as for example LibreOffice Portable?
That is, it does not require anything to be installed on the target machine, all components can be on a USB flash drive?

I try not to install anything on my Windows PC except the PortableApps platform.
Node-Red is installed on a Raspberry Pi but I can see uses for a USB Windows installation.

[TotallyInformation]

@mdkrieg

Ideally I'd like to find a way to customize this at launch.

Normally done by referencing an environment variable in settings.js - see my alternate installer for examples.

@jbudd

Node-Red is installed on a Raspberry Pi but I can see uses for a USB Windows installation.

You won't be able to have a single portable version that works across platforms without carring copies of the (enormous) node_modules folder. That's because Node.js allows compiled C/C++ libraries which compile to different executables on different platforms.

[jbudd]

@TotallyInformation

You won't be able to have a single portable version that works across platforms without carring copies of the (enormous) node_modules folder.

Hmm. Well, storage is cheap!

I don't expect it to work on different operating systems, No idea how other portable apps deal with processor architectures.

But on one of my Raspberries I see ~220MB

du -sm /usr/lib/node_modules/ ~/.node-red
79 /usr/lib/node_modules/
140 /home/pi/.node-red

No doubt it's much bigger on WIndows!

[ozpos]

Not sure if this is of any use. Here is a tiny shell script that starts nr with the port number extracted from the current directory, so for example the nr directory holding the flow, settings and node_modules would be directory_name#xxxx where xxxx is the port number. If no # found then the default 1880 is used.

I also use yarn so that I can run multiple versions of node on the same host.

#!/bin/bash
###################
# start-nr.sh
# -----------
# launch node-red with the user dir as the current dir and a port.
#
# If the containing directory name ends in '#n' where n is a number
# e.g. directory-name#1880 
# then the number will be used as the node-red port.
######################

nr_root=$(pwd);
default_port="1880";
port_index=`expr index "$nr_root" "#"`;

if [ "$port_index" -eq "0" ]; then
   port=$default_port;
else
   new_port=${nr_root:$port_index};
   re='^[0-9]+$';
   if ! [[ $new_port =~ $re ]] ; then
      port=$default_port;
   else
      port=$new_port;
   fi
fi
params="";
for param in "$@"
do
   params+=" "$param;
done
re='admin';
if ! [[ $params =~ $re ]] ; then
   cmd=$nr_root"/node_modules/.bin/node-red -u "$nr_root" -p "$port;
else
   cmd=$nr_root"/node_modules/.bin/node-red"$params;
fi
#echo "cmd="$cmd;
exec $cmd

For yarn I just batch up a list of commands that I keep in 'yarn-init.sh'.

yarn add node@14.17.5
yarn add node-red@2.1.3
yarn add node-red-dashboard@3.1.0

[mdkrieg]

@cymplecy

Apart from the exercise any reason not to use Node-RED desktop?

The exercise was a big part of it which is why I took care to include a walkthrough in the repo.

For me the reason not to use something like Node-RED desktop is that I now use NR for many of the things I used to use Python for (in this case translating and XML database to a flat file) where I want to make a script and throw it in a drawer until I need it again. And in this case, NR beats the pants off python since all my dependencies are portable too

I think some would preach Docker here but I have zero experience with

[mdkrieg]

Update 1.1.0

Added configuration inputs to the initial screen, clicking START launches Node-RED:

I'm very happy with this!

(nodered-portable download | SourceForge.net)

[cymplecy]

Downloaded and ran it -all looked good until I tried to install a node

[mdkrieg]

Yup, same problem for me when I decided to actually try installing from palette.

Luckily the solution was very simple. Node-RED was installing palette modules to the folder "./home/node_modules" and so while it was downloading the modules they weren't properly registering with NR. I changed the default settings from userDir:"home" to userDir:"." and it looks to be working now (I tested final portable file as well).

(download latest file " nodered-portable-v1.1.1-win32-x64.zip" from same link above)

[mweissen]

I have the same problem. Please tell me in which file you made this change. Or can you do it via the configuration menu? I have not found an entry.

[mdkrieg]

Hello @mweissen and welcome to the forums. The palette modules not working should be fixed in the v1.1.1 version, it should download the latest automatically from sourceforge. I just deleted all the old versions anyway so you should be good if you just download again.

Let me know if the issue persists and I'll look into it.

[mweissen]

Hello Matthew!

Thanks for the quick reply. First of all: now everything works.

Yesterday I tried first the version 1.1.1, but without success. So I tried it first with the older version - with the known problems. Now I have loaded the version 1.1.1 again and everything works. Thanks again!

I plan to give a workshop on home automation to teachers in April 2022. NodeRed is an interesting tool for this. For the practical exercises, nodered-portable is a very pratical tool. I will be happy to base the exercises on it.

Regards, Martin Weissenböck, Vienna, Austria

[robgiov]

Hello Matthew!

Good job!!

In this release how can I start nodered without pressing "START".
I need to automatically start nodereded (with default port-httpAdminRoot-httpNodeRoot) when operating system starts.

Optionally, the (port-httpAdminRoot-httpNodeRoot) settings in which file can be changed?

Thanks in advance.

Roberto

[PizzaProgram]

@robgiov

how can I start nodered without pressing "START".

That would interest me too

[paulkeates]

Hi,

I believe that on the 'Inject' node there are options at the very bottom of the page. One of them is "inject once after X seconds" or similar....

I vaguely remember that with older version of node-red I used "npm install node-red-contrib-startup-trigger" that 'forced' the flow to ALWAYS start on deploy no matter what.

Cheers,

Paul

[Jocman]

Hi
just downloaded the 1.1.1, as I'm starting to learn node red.
Unfortunately I can't find the menu item Palette to get new nodes, but in all the pictures here in the post I can see the item is there....
Do i something wrong?
Thanks
Andrea

[cymplecy]

What does your screen look like when you click on the burger menu?

It should look like this