Node-RED 1.2 is now available to install.
If upgrading, please read the upgrade instructions.
Editor Updates
Importing duplicate nodes
In previous releases, when you import a flow, all of its nodes are assigned new identifiers. This meant that if you imported the flow again, you’d get a second copy. If that flow included configuration nodes or subflows that were identical to ones you already had, the editor would avoid importing a duplicate copy and reuse the existing one.
That has generally worked well, but on some occasions it wasn’t ideal. In particular, if you wanted to import an update to a subflow you are using, there was no easy way to do it - it would be imported as a new subflow and you’d have to manually update all the instances to the new subflow.
With this release, when you import a flow that contains nodes you already have, the editor will now ask you what to do. In the case of Subflows and Configuration nodes, it gives you the option of replacing the instances you already have, rather than importing a copy.
Simplified Git Workflow
The projects feature now provides an option for a simplified git workflow. The option, under User Settings, lets you enable an ‘automatic’ mode where changes will be automatically committed with every deploy.
Other project enhancements include:
- the project settings dialog also now lets you edit the project’s version string.
- the
flowFilePrettyoption is now automatically enabled for projects unless explicitly set tofalse
Handling ‘lost’ nodes
We’ve seen a very small number of instances where a node forgets what tab it is
on and its z property is set to 0 or "" - causing the node to disappear
from the editor. We’ve never managed to recreate this issue to get to the bottom
of it - something to do with deleting flows. But with this release, the editor
will now help recover those lost nodes by added a ‘recovery’ tab to add them to.
Other editor features
- Sidebar tabs can now be reordered (details)
- The palette manager has an option to upload a node module tgz file rather than install from the catalog. This can be disabled in the settings. (details)
- The ACE edit component has been updated to the latest version which brings much better support for ES6 JavaScript syntax
- Fixes issues around copy/paste of nodes within groups causing lockups.
- When merging groups, the style options of the first selected group is used for the combined group.
Runtime features
Splitting .config.json into multiple files
The runtime settings file, .config.json has been split in to four separate
files to better organise the content and allow the user to be more selective over
what they version control.
If you have a backup script that includes .config.json you will need to update
it to backup these other files instead.
The runtime will leave the existing .config.json in place in case you chose to
downgrade, but it will no longer be updated.
Introducing RED.hooks api
This is part of the pluggable message routing work that has been in our roadmap for a long time now. It is less relevant to end users at this point in time, but will underpin a lot of exciting features in the future, such as a proper flow debugger, distributed node-red runtimes and integrated flow testing.
Node Features
- The Trigger node can now be configured to set its delay/repeat-interval by
msg.delay - The Function node’s “setup” code can now log and send messages (details)
- More of the core nodes now implement the ‘done’ api so can be used with the Complete node - yaml, xml, json, html, http, template, range, link, status, catch , complete, inject. Work continues on the remaining nodes.
