- docs
- FlowFuse User Manuals
- Using FlowFuse
- Getting Started
- FlowFuse Concepts
- Changing the Stack
- DevOps Pipelines
- Environment Variables
- FlowFuse File Nodes
- FlowFuse Persistent Context
- FlowFuse Project Nodes
- High Availability mode
- Instance Settings
- Logging
- Shared Team Library
- Snapshots
- Teams
- FlowFuse API
- Migrating a Node-RED project to FlowFuse
- Device Agent
- Device Agent
- Hardware Guides
- FlowFuse Cloud
- FlowFuse Cloud
- FlowFuse Self-Hosted
- Installing FlowFuse
- Overview
- Configuring FlowFuse
- DNS Setup
- Docker install
- Email configuration
- First Run Setup
- FlowFuse File Storage
- Install FlowFuse on Kubernetes
- Local Install
- Upgrading FlowFuse
- Administering FlowFuse
- Administering FlowFuse
- Administrator configuration for SSO
- licensing
- Monitoring
- Telemetry
- User Management
- Support
- Community Support
- Premium Support
- Debugging Node-RED issues
- Contributing
- Contributing to FlowFuse
# FlowFuse Project Nodes
Node-RED instances running within FlowFuse include a set of nodes that make it very quick and easy to securely send and receive messages between different instances in a team.
The nodes act in a similar way to the Node-RED Link nodes, but by allowing the links to extended between different instances, they open up a wide range of possibilities.
For example, a single Node-RED instance may contain a set of utility flows that you want to reuse in other instances. Rather than copy the flows around, the Project Nodes allow you to easily call those flows and get the result back.
# Nodes
There are three nodes in the Project Node collection:
Project In
- listens for messages being broadcast by other Node-RED instances, or for messages being sent just to this instanceProject Out
- sends messages to other Node-RED instancesProject Call
- sends messages to other instances and waits for a response
The nodes send the whole msg
object. Due to the way the nodes encode messages, there are some data types that do not get sent. For example, the msg.req
/msg.res
properties used by the core HTTP nodes will not be sent.
Each node is configured with a topic on which it either sends or receives messages on. This is similar in concept to MQTT topics - although the nodes do not currently support using MQTT wildcards in their topics.
The Project Out nodes can either broadcast messages on a topic to anyone listening, or they can send messages on a topic to a specific other instance.
The Project In nodes do the opposite - they can either listen for messages being broadcast, or for messages sent directly to them.
The Project Call node can be used to send a message to another Project In node and then wait for a response, with a built-in timeout if it doesn't arrive. The response is sent back using a Project Out node configured to respond to the call node.
# GitHub
The nodes are published under an Apache-2.0 license and available on GitHub.