Practical Node-RED Programming: Learn powerful visual programming techniques and best practices for the web and IoT

Description

Use a low-code programming approach to create event-driven applications from scratch by wiring together hardware devices, APIs, and online services Key Features Discover how you can automate the Internet of Things (IoT) without writing huge blocks of code Learn how to wire together flows using a browser-based visual editor Handle IoT data with little to no coding knowledge Book Description Node-RED is a free and open source flow-based programming tool used to handle IoT data that allows programmers of any level to interconnect physical I/O, cloud-based systems, databases, and APIs to build web applications without code. Practical Node-RED Programming is a comprehensive introduction for anyone looking to get up to speed with the Node-RED ecosystem in no time. Complete with hands-on tutorials, projects, and self-assessment questions, this easy-to-follow guide will help you to become well versed in the foundations of Node-RED. You'll learn how to use Node-RED to handle IoT data and build web applications without having to write complex code. Once you've covered the basics, you'll explore various visual programming techniques and find out how to make sample flows as you cover web development, IoT development, and cloud service connections, and finally build useful real-world applications. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to use Node-RED to develop a real-world application from scratch, which can then be implemented in your business. What you will learn Understand the history of Node-RED and why you need to learn a flow-based programming tool Use Node-RED to build Node.js-based applications Handle data for IoT devices using Node-RED flows Explore advanced Node-RED features such as connecting repositories and customizing the flow editor Find out what the MQTT protocol is and how it relates to Node-RED Create and publish your own nodes and flows using the Node-RED library Who this book is for This Node-RED book is for web developers and IoT engineers with some background in JavaScript and Node.js. Although not necessary, familiarity with the concepts of electronics will help you to make the most out of this book. Table of Contents Introducing Node-RED and Flow-based programming Setting up the Development Environment Understanding Node-RED characteristics by creating basic flows Learning the Major Nodes Implementing Node-RED locally Implementing Node-RED in the Cloud Calling a Web API from Node-RED Using the Project Feature with Git Creating a ToDo application with Node-RED Handling sensor data on the Raspberry Pi Visualize data by creating a server-side application in the IBM cloud Developing a Chatbot Application Using Slack and IBM Watson Creating and publishing your own node on the Node-RED library Review: Useful and practical introduction - As an IT professional but with no experience of Node-RED or Raspberry Pi, I found this book easy to read with every step along the way illustrated with screenshots. It also introduced me to related technologies that I now intend to follow up. Although some of the examples can be found on the Internet, I would probably not have known to go looking for them without this book. I shall be referring back to this book for many useful links and tasks. Review: Very disappointing - very little here - Having started to get to grips with Node-Red I decided to learn a little more in depth. There is a lot to learn both about the mindset of flow programming and about the various nodes. Given that it was created as an MQTT tool there should be a lot about that too.... Sadly no. The first chapters are devoted to installing Node-Red, nothing that is not easily available in the documentation. He then mentions the "Complete Node" - now for learning new things, but passes straight on without explaining its use or value. Many of the other chapters focus on setting up IBM interfaces - nothing I want to do, and very little to do with node-red. All in all after I skipped over the bits setting up IBM services and other things I did not want there is nothing in here. Node-red is a fantastic tool and there is so much I still want to learn, but this book is focussed on other things. In fact if you added up the pages showing you how to set up external accounts, there is not a whole lot of Node-red in here.