9 Dec 2019

Forge on Node-RED - Visual Programming for Forge

Node-RED is a powerful tool for building Internet of Things (IoT) applications with a focus on simplifying the ‘wiring together’ of code blocks to carry out tasks. It uses a visual programming approach that allows developers to connect predefined code blocks, known as ‘nodes’, together to perform a task. The connected nodes, usually a combination of input nodes, processing nodes and output nodes, when wired together, make up a ‘flows’.

Originally developed as an open source project at IBM in late 2013, to meet their need to quickly connect hardware and devices to web services and other software – as a sort of glue for the IoT – it has quickly evolved to be a general purpose IoT programming tool. Importantly, Node-RED has rapidly developed a significant and growing user base and an active developer community who are contributing new nodes that allow programmers to reuse Node-RED code for a wide variety of tasks. \

Although Node-RED was originally designed to work with the Internet of Things, i.e. devices that interact and control the real world, as it has evolved, it has become useful for a range of applications.

Madhukar, Nadig, Chandra and Cyrille worked on a Forge integration with Node-RED to help non-developer to have a chance to play with the Forge API without the need of doing programming or at least less programming. It is also good environment for quick and dirty prototyping since there is very little setup needed.

I created a video to explain how to install and use Node-RED with Forge but it is as simple as running this command.

npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red

This video will show how to install the Forge nodes, and explain how to use them with 2 concrete examples.

If you feel there is something missing or broken, please let us know - right now oAuth, Data Management, Model Derivative, and Design Automation are implemented. Webhooks and TokenFlex will follow.

You can find github repo here

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