Node-red and Docker update

This is sort of a follow up to my earlier post related to running node-red inside a Docker container. I said "sort of" a follow up because that post was about a Docker container for Raspberry Pi; this one will talk about a container to run on my laptop. A lot of the stuff here applies to Raspberry Pi directly, some needs changes (like the base image, for example). Since that post I learned some things that make building and customizing a Docker container for node-red a lot easier, all thanks to one of the main contributors to node-red, Dave C-J.

All this started because I wanted to build a Docker container with custom packages installed (case in point, I am talking about johnny-five) and I wanted to start with theceejay's master node-red image thinking I will create my own Dockerfile to add the new packages and build a custom image. While looking on Docker hub I noticed theceejay's write up to his other node-red image which is really awesome: it explains things I didn't know about (like using package.json along with Dockerfile) which makes installing new npm packages very easy; also, it talks about overriding the settings.js file when building the custom image and not at runtime as I was doing it previously. This write up is linked to a github repo which I forked and cloned on my local machine, then I modified a little bit by adding johnny-five to package.json. I then built my own custom node-red Docker image (which is basically identical with theceejay's one with the addition of johnny-five package) and started the container mapping a local directory to /root/.node-red so I get a copy of the flow.json and all flows saved in the library:

docker build -t claudiuo/node-red .
docker run -it -p 1880:1880 -v ~/my-node-red:/root/.node-red --name mynodered --rm claudiuo/node-red

Once the container started, Ctrl+PQ followed by Ctrl+C exists the container without shutting it down after which I was able to connect to it using:

docker exec -it mynodered /bin/bash

and confirmed johnny-five was installed. More, looking at the node_modules/node-red/settings.js file, I noticed that jfive and j5Board were already added to the global context, commented out. This was a surprise to me, I had no idea the latest version of node-red comes with these modules already added; this is really cool.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I was also placing a settings.js in my local dir to change the name of the flow file: this is not needed because package.json specifies flow.json as the filename. However, the write up also mentions: "This also copies any files in the same directory as the Dockerfile to the /usr/src/app directory in the container… this means you can also add other node_modules or pre-configured libraries - or indeed overwrite the node_modules/node-red/settings.js file if you wish." So I made a copy of the settings.js in the dir mentioned above, uncommented the 2 johnny-five entries in the global context, placed the file alongside Dockerfile as seen in my repo clone and rebuilt the image. Started the container again and checked it and indeed, the new settings.js is in place.

I was thinking at some point to publish my new custom node-red image to Docker hub but since building it from scratch is as easy as cloning the repo and running docker build, I won't do it. In fact, rebuilding the image will take care of upgrading node-red as well so I rather not publish an image which will be out of date when next release comes out.

Now I need to figure out how to use johnny-five with node-red and build some cool little robot; at this point I have no idea how but I will start with the notes in the second half of this page and go from there. Until then, again, big thanks to Dave C-J for all his awesome work and help.