Making Node-RED available over the Internet
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| by Julian Knight Reading time ~2 min.
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Node-RED
There are already too many people putting up insecure services over the Internet. Please don’t add to this problem. This article explains a simple way to get some level of connectivity to Node-RED over the Internet without security issues. It also explains some of the wider issues and where to go for more details.
The simplest approach to making Node-RED available over the Internet is not to do it at all! Node-RED was not initially designed to be exposed direct to the Internet but rather as a prototyping tool for IoT and Home Automation. As such, it does not have regular security audits and you should very much limit its exposure.
The next simplest approach: A Telegram bot 🔗︎
However, access over the Internet is a common requirement and certainly extends the usefulness of Node-RED.
So the next simplest approach is to make use of a secure 3rd-party messaging service such as Telegram Messenger. Telegram has client apps for just about every platform. It is fast, robust, secure and has a relatively easy to use API (Application Programming Interface).
Create a bot in Telegram, grab the API connection details and install the node-red-contrib-telegrambot nodes into Node-RED.
You can use the bot to send information to Telegram clients and also to allow authorised clients/users/groups to send information and commands to Node-RED via the bot.
The main current limitation is that you cannot use your bot to bridge information from other Telegram bots into Node-RED.
Also, using an instant messaging style interface does limit how you can interact with your users. However, telegram allows a number of ways ranging from conversational interfaces to buttons & autocomplete.
You can also use a bot to send rich data including video and audio to clients. You can also receive such data and other files from users.
If you are trying to create a conversational interface, you might find RiveScript to be useful. There are two nodes available for Node-RED, node-red-contrib-rive and node-red-contrib-rivescript.
Alternative approaches 🔗︎
If a Telegram bot doesn’t meet your requirements, you will want to ensure that all Node-RED web interfaces (including admin, Dashboard, http-in/out, etc) are all properly protected. You will also need to protect the websockets and Socket.IO interfaces that are used. This is non-trivial and care is needed when configuring.
Some additional information is available on the WIKI for the Node-RED Cookbook.
Generally, the safer approach is to put Node-RED behind a reverse proxy. NGINX or HAProxy are two commonly used applications for this purpose.
