You'll need two repos running for this to work. The webapp, and the noflo runtime.
And you'll need to do some wonky config as well...
NOTE: To complete this, you'll need access to GitHub for some reason! Otherwise
you will not be able to log in to the web app and manually add your runtime's
websocket address and secret!!!
This means: They call this thing an "offline service" but it depends on github!
The web based ui (horribly named Noflo for the free version and flowhub for the commercial version) is actually just a web app. The repo is:
https://github.com/noflo/noflo-ui
Once you git clone that repo, run grunt build and then use something
like npm simple-server to host a web server pointing at - believe it
or not - the root of the git repo. So:
git clone https://github.com/noflo/noflo-ui
cd noflo-ui
npm install
grunt build
Once that's done, start hosting the webapp using something like:
sudo npm install simple-server -g
simple_server . 3005
To actually USE that server withOUT using Flowhub's hosted services, you'll need to have a noflo runtime running on your local box. This is not explained very well... but basically, you need to build a Node.js project locally.
The tool you need to build this runtime is:
https://github.com/noflo/noflo-nodejs
And, actually, that depends on:
https://github.com/noflo/noflo
So, here's the instructions to build the runtime you'll need to STOP using the
hosted services of Flowhub. Basically, all these are called out in the
noflo-nodejs README.md but whatever...
mkdir my-noflo-runtime
cd my-noflo-runtime
npm init
You'll have to go through and answer npm's questions here...
npm install noflo noflo-nodejs --save
And now you'll need to also chose what components you want. noflo-core is
pretty important, but there are a bunch of others in npm at this location
https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/noflo
So, install your components using npm:
npm install noflo-core --save
I used the following. This puts a config for the runtime into flowhub.json
node node_modules/.bin/noflo-nodejs-init --host autodetect --port 3569 --label "my-runtime"
Now that everything has been configured, you can actually start the runtime:
node node_modules/.bin/noflo-nodejs --register=false
That --register=false basically says "ignore flowhub's hosted services"
Once you've got both the web app and runtime up and running, you'll need to open up a browser and point it at your webapp. That's probably something like:
http://localhost:3005/index.html
NOTE: You will NEED the index.html because of the way the webapps grunt build
just tosses everything into the repo's root instead of a separate directory
After that, you'll need to log in at the top of the page using your GitHub credentials.
Once you're logged in, you'll ne able to scroll down to the Runtimes section
on the homepage and click the Register button to register a new runtime.
Once the Register a new runtime window pops up, ignore pretty much the entire
thing and click the Add manually button at the bottom.
In the next window, PUT IN THE INFORMATION FROM YOUR RUNTIMES CONFIG FILE!!!
Remember, that config is stored in flowhub.json
NOTE: It is important to match the IP, Port, and Secret exactly. You might as
well match the `Runtime name` with the label in your config as well so you can
figure out what runtime you're using later on...
Once you've registered your runtime in the web app, you can either create a new project or open one of your existing projects. There are two places you need to set the project settings.
In the top LEFT of the project view, there is a little gear next to your project
name. Click that, and under Type, you'll want to select Node.js. Any others
and you're runtime will not be used correctly.
In the top RIGHT of the project view, there are two little arrows pointing past
each other. Click that, and then click Select runtime. You should now be able
to select your Runtime from the list. Make sure that the one you select has
something like WS:// under it.
And that should be it! You should be able to use the core/Output component now
and send some data to console.log...
NOTE: core/Output actually spits to the RUNTIME's Console.log(), NOT your
browsers JS console!