Running on IBM Bluemix

Node-RED is available on the IBM Bluemix platform as one of the boilerplate applications in the catalog.

We also provide a ‘Deploy To Bluemix’ enabled repository.

Boilerplate application

1. Log in or sign-up for an account at Bluemix.net

2. Navigate to the catalog and search for ‘Node-RED’

3. This will present you with two options:

   1. Node-RED Starter - a vanilla Node-RED instance

   2. Internet of Things Platform Starter - this gives you everything you need to started quickly using Node-RED with the Watson IoT Platform, including some default flows to show how things work

   In both cases you will get:

   • a Cloudant database instance to store your flow configuration
   • a collection of nodes that make it easy to access various Bluemix services, including both the Watson IoT platform and the Watson Cognitive services

4. Click the starter application you want to use, give it a name and click create.

A couple of minutes later, you’ll be able to access your instance of Node-RED at https://<yourAppName>.mybluemix.net

Customising your Node-RED application

Securing the editor

To quickly set a username/password to control access to the editor, without having to edit the settings file:

1. In the Bluemix dashboard, select the ‘Environment Variables’ page for your application
2. Add the following user-defined variables:
   • NODE_RED_USERNAME - the username to secure the editor with
   • NODE_RED_PASSWORD - the password to secure the editor with
3. Click Save.

Adding nodes

You can add nodes from within the editor. Select the manage palette option from the dropdown menu within the editor.

Alternatively, you can edit the the application’s package.json file and add the required node modules in the dependencies section. The format is: "node-red-node-package-name":"x.x.x" Where x.x.x is the desired version number.

Upgrading the version of Node-RED

How you upgrade your instance of Node-RED will depend on when you deployed it originally as that will determine the version of the boilerplate and the version of the node.js buildpack used.

If you deployed your instance after November 2016, you can trigger a restage using the cf command-line tool:

$ cf restage my-app

If you deployed your instance before then, you will need to take some additional steps:

1. edit your application’s package.json file - see below for how to edit the file
2. update the engines property to 4.x if it is not currently set to that
3. update the node-red property under the dependencies section to the version of Node-RED you want to upgrade to.

In order to edit the file you must enable the Continuous Delivery integration option via your application’s Bluemix dashboard page. That will create a git repository on either GitHub or IBM DevOps services, from where you can edit the file, save the changes and automatically update the application in Bluemix.

Changing the static web content

The landing page of your instance is provide by static content with the application. This can be replaced with whatever content you want in the public directory.

If you want to remove the static web content and serve the flow editor from the root path, delete the httpStatic and httpAdminRoot entries in the bluemix-settings.js file.

Deploy To Bluemix

The Deploy To Bluemix enabled repository lets you create your own customised Node-RED application that can then be deployed to Bluemix with a couple clicks.

You can try it out now by clicking here:

When you click the button, you are taken to Bluemix where you get a pick a name for your application at which point the platform takes over, grabs the code from this repository and deploys it.

It will automatically create an instance of the Cloudant service, call it sample-node-red-cloudantNoSQLDB and bind it to you application. This is where your Node-RED instance will store its data. If you deploy multiple instances of Node-RED from this repository, they will share the one Cloudant instance.

It includes a set of default flows that are automatically deployed the first time Node-RED runs.

Customising your Node-RED repository

The repository is there to be cloned, modified and re-used to allow anyone to create their own Node-RED based application that can be quickly deployed to Bluemix.

The default flows are stored in the defaults directory in the file called flow.json.

The web content you get when you go to the application’s URL is stored under the public directory.

Additional nodes can be added to the package.json file and all other Node-RED configuration settings can be set in bluemix-settings.js.

If you do clone the repository, make sure you update the README.md file to point the Deploy to Bluemix button at your repository.

If you want to change the name of the Cloudant instance that gets created, the memory allocated to the application or other deploy-time options, have a look in manifest.yml.