# Possible new contributed message gate node

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/possible-new-contributed-message-gate-node/7382>\
**Category:** Share Your Nodes\
**Created:** [29 January 2019 22:59 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/possible-new-contributed-message-gate-node/7382 "2019-01-29T22:59:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![drmibell](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/drmibell/32/8424_2.png) [@drmibell](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/drmibell)\
**Post date:** [30 January 2019 18:02 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/possible-new-contributed-message-gate-node/7382/3 "2019-01-30T18:02:38Z")

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@dceejay, thanks for the feedback. Slightly out of sequence:

> [@dceejay](#):
>
> You could of course get the same effect by using link nodes together with your existing node.

Exactly! That is what I do, and frankly I doubt that I would ever use this node. I cooked it up because a user of the existing node asked for it, and I thought it would be an interesting exercise. I have not heard back from that user, so I'm in no hurry to publish to npm. It's available on GitHub to anyone who wants it, and I wanted to have this conversation rather than seem "anti-social" by dumping something out there that breaks the rules.

> [@dceejay](#):
>
> So how can someone "read" the flow and understand what it is triggered by ?

I suppose these nodes should come with a caution label saying that they can make flows difficult to debug or modify. I have arranged for each node to display its topic if it is not given a name. This should help, as it does with `mqtt` nodes, which can be equally difficult to follow by inspection. Also, keep in mind that, unlike `mqtt` nodes, the traffic being passed here consists of "out-of-band" control messages that cannot actually trigger a flow.

> [@dceejay](#):
>
> The exceptions you mention (like the link node) do (or will soon) visualise the link when selected.
> 
> What may break in the future is when we start to allow wires that may not stay local (ie distributed flows) where we won't know about any magic links you have created and they would not work.

My first thought was to embed the functionality of the `link` nodes in my gate and controller nodes. As Nick said in another thread, this is not possible, and I assume that if the connections for `link` (and `catch` and `status` nodes?) are going to extend beyond their local flows, it is unlikely that custom nodes will ever get access to that infrastructure. Definitely a warning to potential users.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this.

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