#  Custom Node Packages

FlowFuse has access to the wide range of Node-RED nodes listed in the public catalogue. But occasionally there will be the need for a custom node for a situation that is specific to your Team.

If you decide to develop your own nodes, you will need somewhere to host both the node and a Node-RED catalogue file. FlowFuse has two solutions for this:

1. FlowFuse Hosted Nodes - Use the private NPM registry hosted by FlowFuse to store and manage your custom npm packages.
2. Third-Party NPM Registries - If you already have a private npm registry, you can enable access to these in your Instance's settings.

#  FlowFuse Hosted Nodes

If you want to create a Node-RED node for private use by Instances in your FlowFuse Team then you can publish them to the FlowFuse Custom Node Registry (available to Teams and Enterprise level teams on FlowFuse Cloud).

#  Publishing Nodes

After developing your node you can publish it to your Teams Custom Nodes registry with the following steps

#  Authenticating

Before publishing to the registry you need to authenticate. This step should only need to be done once.

The credentials can be found by navigating to the "Custom Nodes" tab under the Team Library and clicking on the "Publish" button.

Screenshot fo the "Publish Custom Package" dialog shown in the FlowFuse UI

npm login --registry=https://registry.flowfuse.cloud

#  Packaging

There are steps required to ensure your node is correctly packaged for the FlowFuse Custom Nodes registry

1. Make sure the package name contains the correct scope prefix e.g. @flowfuse-[team id]/node-name. The correct prefix will be shown on the in the FlowFuse application
2. Add a publishConfig section with a registry entry

e.g. for a Team with ID 6Rag1kQj4k

{
    "name": "@flowfuse-6Rag1kQj4k/bar",
    "version": "0.0.1",
    "description": "...",
    "publishConfig": {
        "registry": "https://registry.flowfuse.cloud"
    },
    ...
}

#  Publishing

In the same directory as the package.json file run the following command

npm publish

Once published you should see the Node listed in the "Custom Nodes" section of the Team Library.

Screenshot of the "Custom Nodes" view in the Team Library

#  Installing Nodes

Any packages uploaded to the Team Library will be published to your Instances under a custom catalogue with the name "FlowFuse Team [team name] Catalogue"

Screenshot of the contents of a FlowFUse catalogue appearing in the "install" tab of the Node-RED Palette Manager

#  3rd Party NPM Registries or Private npmjs.org packages

The following features are available to Team and Enterprise users of FlowFuse Cloud.

#  NPM Registries

If you have already published packages to an existing NPM Registry then you can enable access to this by adding the required values to a `.npmrc" file in the Instance Settings.

This can include authentication tokens to access private packages.

Screenshot from the FlowFuse platform, showing the input for defining an .npmrc file

#  Node-RED Catalogues

In order to be able to install packages in the Node-RED editor they need to in a Node-RED Catalogue file that is loaded from a HTTPS URL. You can supply a list of Catalogue URLs in the Instance Settings.

Screenshot of the listed Node Catalogues configured on an Instance