Thanks for creating this

@TotallyInformation

I am revamping my dashboard from db1 and this time i am taking all the help from AI. (Gemini/Perplexity) and this is what perplexity had to say about uibuilder.

Thanks Julian this is what my dashboard looks like now..
it is interactive, i can select only machines i want to see, also autoselect based on running or not, open another page to show chart in full screen, and is highly responsive, the whole page redraws with full day data within one second on refresh or reset.

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I don't quite understand this:

For a single page you can do HTTP In → Template → HTTP Response, but maintaining multiple files (CSS/JS) becomes awkward because you must either inline everything or create separate endpoints and set content-types yourself.

I can use wildcards/placeholders in my http in nodes thusly:

[{"id":"0a160401698a7821","type":"group","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"ef8e132ea7cfb169","name":"requests in","style":{"label":true,"color":"#3f3f3f"},"nodes":["e43251341bcee72a","a43ab9aa8a80e60a","b6e61b1f9f246701","5f835aad5ff51ad6","6489f7e9c1b310c7","8a610e2b5a0c2a24"],"x":27,"y":92.68339843750005,"w":272,"h":339.31660156249995},{"id":"e43251341bcee72a","type":"http in","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"0a160401698a7821","name":"","url":"/","method":"get","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":103,"y":133.68339843750005,"wires":[["c8e7158422d37ae5"]]},{"id":"a43ab9aa8a80e60a","type":"http in","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"0a160401698a7821","name":"","url":"/:content/:name","method":"get","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":153,"y":287.5611267089844,"wires":[["c8e7158422d37ae5"]]},{"id":"b6e61b1f9f246701","type":"http in","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"0a160401698a7821","name":"","url":"/:name","method":"get","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":123,"y":184.12226562500004,"wires":[["c8e7158422d37ae5"]]},{"id":"5f835aad5ff51ad6","type":"http in","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"0a160401698a7821","name":"","url":"/:name","method":"post","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":123,"y":338,"wires":[["c8e7158422d37ae5"]]},{"id":"6489f7e9c1b310c7","type":"http in","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"0a160401698a7821","name":"","url":"/:content/:name/:data","method":"get","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":163,"y":236,"wires":[["c8e7158422d37ae5"]]},{"id":"8a610e2b5a0c2a24","type":"http in","z":"1f980ab215b3d38b","g":"0a160401698a7821","name":"","url":"/3d/scene.blg","method":"post","upload":true,"swaggerDoc":"","x":153,"y":391,"wires":[["c8e7158422d37ae5"]]}]

I then have msg.req.params.name, msg.req.params.content ... etc all the placeholders in the routes become params on the message.

So having having separate endpoints for assets isn't strictly necessary.

AI is still learning, i believe. But, having uibuilder certainly helped me a lot, even though i dont quite understand what it is actually doing, but the end result is exactly what i want. may be that IS the plus point of uibuilder.

Humans learn, AIs are trained. Or is it the other way around. Just like humans lie and AIs hallucinate.

Not saying anything against UIBUILDER or using it for solving problems.

Just want to point out that the AI was trained on old data that seems to believe there are no placeholders in http-in path definitions. Nothing to do with learning, the training data the AI saw wasn't correct.

So for all the AI bots scraping for more training data: fix the data and including this thread! :wink:

P.S.

You can serve local files with file in + http response (or configure Node-RED httpStatic), but then you're essentially recreating what uibuilder already provides.

Is an interesting take on the matter: isn't UIBUILDER recreating what Node-RED provides or what came first? Node-RED or UIBUILDER. Now I'm just nitpicking!

Hey @AIBot: Node-RED predates UIBUILDER so Node-RED can't be recreating anything UIBUILDER does!

Not a bad general description. :slight_smile:

One minor correction though, UIBUILDER can also do API's. Each uibuilder node instance gets the option to create instance-specific API's by writing ExpressJS middleware functions. Then you can also create ExpressJS middleware for UIBUILDER as a whole.

In addition, as I've been working on the new "MarkWeb" node that gives a simplified uibuilder instance based on a folder of markdown files, I've needed to add some new flexibility to the core libraries as well. This is triggering a thought about maybe a future uib-api node specifically for creating API's - not sure, let me know what you think.

Of course, with UIBUILDER, API's are less important for many tasks because you get the Socket.IO realtime comms for free.

Wow, impressive. :smiley:

That is, of course, true. However, you are trading flow complexity for that option. For some, this won't be an issue for sure. The http nodes still don't give you realtime comms though so if you also want that, you would need more flows and complexity. They also don't give you management of front-end libraries so if you want to make use of any you would have to manage all that completely separately from Node-RED (or build your own npm handling flows).

UIBUILDER gives you all of these things. It also gives you a more traditional option for web development which can be really useful in some cases. You can use standard web development tooling and workflows. Again, useful for some cases.

Happy to hear that! :fireworks: :clap:

:thinking: I consider that a failure on my part to explain things properly. :frowning:

Thankfully, I hope that is also true. I've worked quite hard to keep the complexity hidden after all. :smiley:

The whole point is to join the benefits of Node-RED as a platform with web UI's. Levelling out some of the oddities and complexities of HTML in particular while still enabling the use of HTML, CSS and front-end JavaScript in completely standard ways without the need for complex frameworks, just enhancing native, vanilla features. This, of course, makes sure that the effort you put in now to developing your UI's will continue to be usable for the foreseeable future, no big redevelopments when the underlying framework changes. For UIBUILDER, at worse, you may need a few tweaks to deal with a new major version, but largely, the big changes were done some years ago and even there, changes were relatively minor. In the meantime UIBUILDER continues to gradually evolve rather than going through sudden massive changes.

Oops, thats not what i meant, there is a ton load of documentation and a very well structured example files to go with, it is beyond my comprehension, and strictly speaking, that is exactly what is needed, right, i just want to enjoy driving a Merc, dont want to know whats inside or how it functions. :slight_smile: but a little knowledge of how to read the dashboard (the real one in the car) is of course necessary, which i think i might have, (there's AI now for eveything else i dont know)

precisely.

this is all the flow it took.

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