Book Image

Practical Node-RED Programming

By : Taiji Hagino
5 (1)
Book Image

Practical Node-RED Programming

5 (1)
By: Taiji Hagino

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Node-RED Basics
6
Section 2: Mastering Node-RED
11
Section 3: Practical Matters

How to call the web API on a node

So far, we've learned what a RESTful API is and which node is appropriate for an API call.

In this part, let's create a flow that actually calls the API from Node-RED and learn how to call the API and how to handle the result value from the API.

There are a few things to think about first, such as which API to call. Fortunately, various APIs are published on the internet.

This time, I would like to use the OpenWeatherMap API. In OpenWeatherMap, for example, the following APIs for data acquisition are prepared:

  • Current weather data
  • Hourly forecast 4 days
  • Daily forecast 16 days
  • Climatic forecast 30 days
  • Weather alerts
  • And more...

For more information, please see the official website of OpenWeatherMap: https://openweathermap.org/.

Okay, let's prepare to use the OpenWeatherMap API.

Creating an account

To use the OpenWeatherMap API, we need to create an account. Please access the following...