node-red-contrib-folders 1.0.15

Organize Node-RED flows with a structured folder explorer for cleaner navigation in large projects.

npm install node-red-contrib-folders

node-red-contrib-folders

Version: 1.0.15

node-red-contrib-folders adds a folder-based explorer to the Node-RED editor. It is intended for larger Node-RED projects where the normal flat list of flow tabs becomes hard to scan.

Folders is an editor plugin. It does not change how Node-RED runs, deploys, or stores nodes at runtime. The folder structure is visual organisation for the editor.

Features

• Browse flows and subflows in one shared workspace tree.
• Create folders, flows from the explorer.
• Move flows, subflows, and folders with drag and drop.
• Rename flows, subflows, and folders from the explorer.
• Search, filter, and sort the workspace.
• Store folder metadata created date, and updated date for sorting.
• Show additional (sub)flow information in the Node-RED information sidebar.

• Apply hide/show, enable/disable, and lock/unlock actions to flows, subflows, or whole folders.
• Style folders, flows, and subflows with selectable icons and colours.

• Features mentioned above available as right-click.

Subflows use the normal flow icon by default with a small S badge so they remain identifiable even when a custom icon is selected.

Storage

Project structure data is stored in a Node-RED global environment variable named:

folders

Node-RED stores this global environment variables with the flow file, so the folder structure can be exported, backed up, etc, together with the rest of the project.

Local editor-only preferences, such as open folders and sort/filter settings, are stored in the browser local storage. These preferences are not written to flows.json.

Compatibility

This package is designed for Node-RED >=5 and Node.js >=18.5.

If another user opens the project without this package installed, the Node-RED project will still run normally. They simply will not see the Folders explorer or its visual organisation.

Removing

Removing the package only removes the editor plugin. It does not delete the saved folders project metadata from your flow file.

To fully reset the saved folder structure, remove the folders global environment variable from the project.