The RED object has 3 APIs

General
1

Hi There,

I have a question related to the RED object that exists in three different incarnations:

  • RED in the backend
  • RED in the context of a function node
  • RED in the frontend browser console

each of these RED objects has a different API, eg: RED.nodes.node(<nodeid>) will return the node object in the frontend, RED.nodes.getNode(<nodeid>) will do the same thing in the backend and in a function node this isn't possible:

msg.node = RED.nodes.getNode("nodeid")

results in

"TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'getNode')"

when done in a function node.

What this means is that in a custom node, I can use the RED.nodes.getNode(<nodeid>) to get a node, in the function node I can't but how do I know?

So here my question: is there a way to start the Node-RED backend in a console mode where I can start the backend in the context of a flows.json and then start play around. Something like:

shell-prompt> node-red --debug-console
Welcome to Node.js v21.6.1.
Type ".help" for more information.
Node-RED v3.1.1 loaded
/user/fubar/.node-red/flows.json loaded
> console.log(RED)
....

This would make testing custom nodes a little simpler.

Sorry if this has already been answered ...