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Fair-Code Automation with n8n.io
 
 
automation

Fair-Code Automation with n8n.io

  * David Field

    David Field

    Read more posts by this author.

    David Field

David Field

4 Jan 2021 * 9 min read
Fair-Code Automation with n8n.io

I recently installed a rocket.chat server which I covered here

 
Rocket Chat, yes it's better than Teams.
There are a fair few Rocket Chat blogs published over the last few
weeks. Sothis post is going to show you how to install it and some
cool things you can dowith it. Rocket.Chat - The Leading
Communication HubLead with a Communication Hub thatallows total
control of your data. All in one platform...
[favicon]David FieldTech Blog Posts - David Field
[rocket_ban]

One of the features I really like is the integration with Rocket Chat
and Zapier. While it works really well, its also very expensive (at
time of writing) from the free tier to the next one up.

Turns out the free tier is really just for dev work, as soon as you
start using it, it depletes very quickly.

I understand this, its a business model, and one many businesses use.
However as I look to take the entire project self hosted I was
interested to see what was available for performing the Zapier/IFTTT
type functionality.

n8n

After a look around I setup n8n

 
n8n
n8n is an extendable workflow automation tool which enables you to
connect anything to everything via its open, fair-code model.
[favicon]Blog Twitter Github LinkedIn Facebook YouTube
[og-image]

The business has only been "public" since Oct 2019 and describes
itself as

    n8n, a Berlin-based company that has built a "fair code" workflow
    automation platform to let developers quickly integrate any of
    the apps that they use to work together automatically -- from
    standard third-party APIs to internal tools created by developers
    themselves

From my perspective its a a web gui interface backed by code which
takes items from X and passes them through gates to Y and displays
them.

Off the bat its not as intuative as the aforementioned Zapier and
IFTTT and you will need to get your hands dirty with some code. There
is however good comunity support (considering this has only been
around for a short time) which is google aware as well.

I was able to setup a quick and simple n8n workflow for Rocket chat
with a bit of googling without reading the documentation.

Installation

n8n is an npm app, and the site does show examples of both running
and installing it as an npm app. However I found the quickets method
of getting something up and running to see what it looked like was to
use the docker container

# Spin up a basic container
docker run -it --rm \
--name n8n \
-p 5678:5678 \
-v ~/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n \
n8nio/n8n:latest

This will get you what can only be classed as a dev environment, it
has no credntials to login with, the webhook stuff only listens on
localhost etc. The idea here is to quickly get a test environment to
see if n8n is for you.

Proper Installation

If you'd like something a lot more stable and secure setup then head
over to the n8n Docker Hub page

 
Docker Hub

Where there ware plenty of options for getting n8n setup in different
types of production environment.

I chose to go a little hybrid in my docker compose as at current i'm
using this at home.

nano docker-compose.yaml

version: "3"

services:
  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"
    environment:
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE=true
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD
      - N8N_HOST=${SUBDOMAIN}.${DOMAIN_NAME}
      - N8N_PORT=5678
      - N8N_PROTOCOL=http
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - WEBHOOK_TUNNEL_URL=http://10.10.100.10/
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - ${DATA_FOLDER}/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n

Then crerated a hidden environment file

nano .env

# Folder where data should be saved
DATA_FOLDER=/opt/applications/n8n

# The top level domain to serve from
DOMAIN_NAME=my.lan

# The subdomain to serve from
SUBDOMAIN=n8n

# DOMAIN_NAME and SUBDOMAIN combined decide where n8n will be reachable from
# above example would result in: http://n8n.my.lan

# The user name to use for autentication - IMPORTANT ALWAYS CHANGE!
N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER=admin

# The password to use for autentication - IMPORTANT ALWAYS CHANGE!
N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD=eNtErAsAsSyPaSsWoRdHeRe

# Optional timezone to set which gets used by Cron-Node by default
# If not set New York time will be used
GENERIC_TIMEZONE=Europe/London

# The email address to use for the SSL certificate creation
SSL_EMAIL=anexample@gmail.com

running this up with Docker compose

docker-compose up -d

Should spin up an n8n environment asking for creds on

http://n8n.my.lan:5678

Enter the creds you provided an you'll be away to go.

First Screen

Once you launch n8n you'll be taken to the webgui home screen

[Screenshot]

A blank canvas of imagination

Clicking on the Plus in the top right creates nodes, nodes are the
steps of the workflow.

[Screenshot]

And on the left hand side is a menu system for saving, exporting,
importing etc.

[Screenshot]

So the interfaced is pretty sparse, its supposed to be

There is a good n8n video covering the basics

Basic Workflow

Rather than trying to read all the documentation I jumped straight in
as I had a workflow I wanted to try and get working.

Input

My Input is a set of rss feeds, for this example i've chosen comics

[Screenshot]

Output

The output was to daily get the latest comic from the feed to the
"dailycomics" channel in my Rocket Chat feed.

The Result

What I ended up with was this

  * Cron node runs the job at 7am each day
  * Several RSS feeds are then checked
  * Because this would provide me with the last weeks worth of output
    for each RSS feed there is some code to only take the last feed
  * Push this to Rocket chat using a personal token.

[Screenshot]

What does this look like?

If we double click on each node type its possible to see how this is
setup

Cron

The Cron Node is a built in node and in this example i've setup the
task to run twice a day

[Screenshot]

RSS

This is a very basic built in node and needs the URL of the RSS feed

[rssnode]

Function

These code blocks are interesting as there isn't an obvious node to
use with them, however if you drag and drop code blocks onto the
interface n8n will create an appropriate node block. this is handy as
well in the support forums where there are lots of code blocks
answering questions. Copy them and paste into the n8n interface and a
node is created.

This is javascript code stating just the latest item in the rss list.

[Screenshot]

Rocket.Chat

Rocket Chat again is a built in node type and is after some core
information

[Screenshot]

What will need to be setup are the creds used to communicate with
Rocket Chat

Which can be done using Create new

[Screenshot]

Then enter the personal toen information from Rocket Chat

[Screenshot]

Click on Create

And its done.

What that looks like as code

n8n provides an interface to download all of this as code, you'll
notice that there are no creds stored in the downloaded json file,
these are stored in the associated mongoDb

{

"name": "rss to rocket.chat",
"nodes": [
{
"parameters": {},
"name": "Start",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.start",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
250,
300
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"url": "=https://www.comicsrss.com/rss/calvinandhobbes.rss"
},
"name": "RSS - Calvin and Hobbes",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
540,
890
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"url": "https://www.comicsrss.com/rss/dilbert.rss"
},
"name": "RSS Feed - Dilbert",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
550,
710
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"url": "https://www.comicsrss.com/rss/fredbasset.rss"
},
"name": "RSS Feed - Fred Bassett",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
550,
550
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"channel": "dailycomics",
"text": "={{$json["title"]}}\n{{$json["link"]}}",
"jsonParameters": true,
"options": {}
},
"name": "RocketChat",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rocketchat",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
1190,
650
],
"alwaysOutputData": false
},
{
"parameters": {
"functionCode": "return [\n items[0]\n];"
},
"name": "Only First Function",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.function",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
890,
640
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"triggerTimes": {
"item": [
{
"hour": 7
},
{
"hour": 19
}
]
}
},
"name": "Cron",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.cron",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
300,
740
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"url": "https://www.comicsrss.com/rss/garfield.rss"
},
"name": "RSS Feed R- Garfield",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
560,
390
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"url": "https://www.comicsrss.com/rss/hagarthehorrible.rss"
},
"name": "RSS Feed - Hagar",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
550,
240
]
},
{
"parameters": {
"url": "https://www.comicsrss.com/rss/wizardofid.rss"
},
"name": "RSS Feed Read",
"type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
"typeVersion": 1,
"position": [
540,
1060
]
}
],
"connections": {
"RSS Feed - Dilbert": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "Only First Function",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"RSS Feed - Fred Bassett": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "Only First Function",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"RSS - Calvin and Hobbes": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "Only First Function",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"Only First Function": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "RocketChat",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"Cron": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "RSS Feed - Fred Bassett",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
},
{
"node": "RSS Feed - Dilbert",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
},
{
"node": "RSS - Calvin and Hobbes",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
},
{
"node": "RSS Feed R- Garfield",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
},
{
"node": "RSS Feed - Hagar",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
},
{
"node": "RSS Feed Read",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"RSS Feed R- Garfield": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "Only First Function",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"RSS Feed - Hagar": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "Only First Function",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
},
"RSS Feed Read": {
"main": [
[
{
"node": "Only First Function",
"type": "main",
"index": 0
}
]
]
}
},
"active": true,
"settings": {},
"id": "1"
}

This code can also be imported back into n8n if you need to rebuild..
as I did, and all i needed to do was setup the Rocket Chat creds
again.

Moving forward

This is just a very high level example of something I was able to
quickly knock up and produce without reading the manual or doing any
other tutorials, so it is possible to pick this up and do something
as a non coder

I've got some additional ideas arount webhooks i'd like to try and
will add them here as code examples.

Thoughts

This isn't as consumer friendly as Zaper or IFTTT however it is a
very powerful product. Its got a lot of scope for automation or data
manipulation. I hope the funding by Sequoia is spent well and the
support carries on being friendly.

More in automation

  * Rudder: Checking your Automation is not breaking your servers.

    6 Aug 2020 - 16 min read

  * Top 10 - Homelab Tools and Software

    25 Jul 2020 - 14 min read

  * Rundeck 3: Setting up simple jobs to run on remote nodes

    6 Jun 2020 - 8 min read

See all 6 posts - Rocket Chat, yes it's better than Teams.
 
blog

Rocket Chat, yes it's better than Teams.

There are a fair few Rocket Chat blogs published over the last few
weeks. So this post is going to show you how to install it and some
cool things

  * David Field
    David Field

David Field 31 Dec 2020 * 13 min read
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