Making n8n extendable

[ajtatum]

I think anyone that has used n8n outside of Cloudron know that it has loads of potential. For me to move my n8n instance into Cloudron would be amazing, but without the ability to add npm packages as I need them would really slow down any prototyping & development.

However, I read some conversations where @roofboard has made some pretty awesome changes like integrating Python.

I kind of wanted to open the floor to see how, or if, it's possible to make n8n more extendable out of the box and, if not, if there could be clearer documentation on how to do things or at least a faster way than rebuilding & deploying when I just want to add a npm package.

Anyway, after speaking with @roofboard he thought it would also be best to create a thread to have a general discussion about this topic and see where it takes us!

I look forward to hearing from everyone and learning all the use cases!

[robi]

@ajtatum as you probably know, any language and its modules can be installed standalone in userspace, and N8N simply needs to be able to use it from the non standard path.

[thetomester13]

@ajtatum I seem to be able to install 'community nodes' from my n8n hosted on Cloudron - this gives a whole lot of flexibility without having to adjust the package. Main thing is, yes, there does need to actually be a community node out there that does what you want it to do. Just a thought.

[Sam_uk]

@thetomester13 said in Making n8n extendable:

I seem to be able to install 'community nodes' from my n8n hosted on Cloudron

Does anyone have any info on how to do this? From the N8N WebUI install of this module fails https://www.npmjs.com/package/@digital-boss/n8n-nodes-humhub?activeTab=readme

Is there some other way you have to upload them into the filesystem?

82 verbose stack Error: EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/app/code/node_modules/fsevents'
83 verbose cwd /app/code
84 verbose Linux 5.4.0-125-generic
85 verbose argv "/usr/local/node-16.15.0/bin/node" "/usr/local/node-16.15.0/bin/npm" "i" "@digital-boss/n8n-nodes-humhub"
86 verbose node v16.15.0
87 verbose npm v8.5.5
88 error code EROFS
89 error syscall mkdir
90 error path /app/code/node_modules/fsevents
91 error errno -30
92 error rofs EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/app/code/node_modules/fsevents'
93 error rofs Often virtualized file systems, or other file systems
93 error rofs that don't support symlinks, give this error.

[Sam_uk]

@Sam_uk I see a /custom-extensions folder is that where I need to upload? In what format?

[robi]

@Sam_uk if you put all the npm files needed into that folder in /app/data manually, what happens?

[Sam_uk]

@robi I just made it work following https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/7629/error-installing-community-nodes-on-n8n/20