Workbench

The Connectware ships with a running Node-RED (https://nodered.org) application.

To start working with the prototyping Node-RED Workbench, on the navigation panel click on the Workbench menu item. This will open the running Node-RED editor for the Workbench in another browser tab.

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Note

However, this Node-RED workbench is not intended to be used in production-ready services but rather for quick and easy prototyping tests. In deployments where Node-RED should be used in production, the recommended setup is to create a service commissioning file which installs a Node-RED container as Cybus::Container resource on its own. This way, the authors of the service have the full control over the versioning and life cycle of the Node-RED instance.

Further instructions on how to work with Node-RED can be found here: https://nodered.org/docs

For connecting the Node-RED flow to the Connectware API, the Connectware can be reached by using the server name connectware both for MQTT (1883) and HTTPS (443) connections.

../_images/nodered-mqtt-server.png

Additionally, when subscribing or publishing to the Connectware server, a suitable username and password has to be set manually in the Node-RED workbench. You need to ensure that the given user has sufficient permissions (or suitable roles) in order to access the topics in question. See also User Management.

../_images/nodered-username.png

Flows in Git Repositories

The Workbench allows to store Flows in any external Git Repository. This is called the “Workbench Projects” feature.

You can get familiar with Node-RED’s Projects feature (https://nodered.org/docs/user-guide/projects/) to understand how this works in practice. In order to enable it in your Connectware, you must modify the configuration as described next.

Configuration

In order to enable the workbench projects feature, the following Environment Variables must be configured:

  • CYBUS_WORKBENCH_PROJECTS_ENABLED: If true, the Projects feature will be enabled. Default: false.

If the feature should be enabled, this value needs to be set to true in the environment variable configuration. By default the settings should look like this:

# Workbench Configuration
CYBUS_WORKBENCH_PROJECTS_ENABLED=false