node-red-contrib-protobuf

This project features protobuf encode/decode nodes. Load a proto file, supply a desired type for encoding or decoding and have fun.

Installation

To install run

npm install --production --save node-red-contrib-protobuf 

Omit the --production flag, in order to install the development dependencies for testing and coverage. Omit --save if you don't want to add it to your package.json.

This node depends on protobufjs as the main package and will install it along with it.

Usage

1. Place an encode/decode node on a flow
2. Configure the protofile path pointing to your protobuf file(s)
3. Either supply a proto type
   1. within the encode/decode configuration
   2. with the msg.protobufType field (takes precedence over node configuration)
4. Either send a protobuf encoded payload to the decode node or a JSON encoded payload to the encode node

Note on the protofile node The proto file node watches the specified file(s) for changes on the filesystem through nodejs fs API. If the file contents of the .proto-file change on disk, the file becomes reloaded. This may happen multiple times at once due to OS and editor specifics. If multiple comma-separated paths are specified, only the first one is monitored right now to save some resources.

Features

• Encode JSON payload to protobuf messages
• Decode protobuf messages to JSON payload
• Load protobuf file(s) from the local file system
• Consider protos from one or multiple protobuf files (including inheritance)

Contribution

To setup your local development environment first clone this repository, then use a container runtime to get your node-red environment up and running like this:

podman run -p 1880:1880 -v $(pwd):/tmp/node-red-contrib-protobuf -d --name nodered nodered/node-red

After you saved your changes to the code update the installation within the container with this command:

podman exec -it nodered npm install /tmp/node-red-contrib-protobuf/ && podman restart nodered

Note on SELinux enabled machines it's necessary to allow containers access to your working directory like this: chcon -t container_file_t $(pwd)

Testing and Coverage-Report

First npm install for the dev dependencies. Tests, linting and code coverage are then available through:

npm test
npm run coverage
npm run lint

License

The BSD 3-Clause License

Alexander Wellbrock

Roadmap

• validate type from loaded .proto files
• allow .proto-path to be a URL
• expose more configuration parameters from the protobufjs API
• write tests covering misconfiguration and errors/exceptions
• enhance the multi-file selection UI