Environment Variables

Environment Variables allow you to manage variables used in your Node-RED flows from the FlowFuse application, you can read more on how to access environment variables inside Node-RED in the Node-RED Docs.

An Environment Variable consists of a name and a value.

Editing

You can edit the environment variables from the Settings tab of an instance, select the Environment option from the side menu.

Changes will only take effect when the Node-RED instance is restarted.

Template provided variables

The Template may include some predefined environment variables that are automatically applied. The template may lock some of those variables to prevent an individual instance from changing them.

Variables provided by the template cannot be deleted, however if they are editable, their value can be set to blank.

Node-RED instance variables

You can create additional variables for an individual Node-RED instance clicking the Add variable button.

You can import variables from a .env file using the Import .env button.

You can delete a variable using the trash can icon.

The image below shows an instance with the following environment variables:

  • policy_item_locked - added by the template, locked
  • policy_item_editable - added by the template, editable
  • FF_INSTANCE_ID - provided by the platform, locked
  • FF_INSTANCE_NAME - provided by the platform, locked
  • FF_PROJECT_ID - provided by the platform, locked, depreciated
  • FF_PROJECT_NAME - provided by the platform, locked, depreciated
  • INSTANCE_VAR - added to the instance, editable

Standard environment variables

Standard environment variables are set for all Node-RED instances running within the platform:

  • FF_INSTANCE_ID
  • FF_INSTANCE_NAME

In addition, the following variables are set when running on a device:

  • FF_DEVICE_ID
  • FF_DEVICE_NAME
  • FF_DEVICE_TYPE
  • FF_SNAPSHOT_ID
  • FF_SNAPSHOT_NAME

When deploying the same set of flows out to multiple devices, these variables can be used by the flows to identify the specific device being run on.