Hi all, I wasn't sure of the best place to post th...
# suitetalkapin
Nicholas Penree
05/19/2022, 4:57 PMHi all, I wasn't sure of the best place to post this but wanted to share something that I've found incredibly useful. There is a free, open-source tool called N8N (n8n.io) for low-code automation. I've put together a custom node that allows you to integrate with the REST API v1. I'm working on documenting it now, but feel free to ping me if you'd like to try it out.
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:46 PMdo you know if this tool supports TypeScript, or alternately can you upload javascript files (i.e transpile locally, upload JS)
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:47 PMCustom nodes like the one I built can be done in TypeScript or JavaScript
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:47 PMyou can set up any code block in the app to allow built-in or external npm modules so you can use require() to load them
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:48 PMis the main programming experience just a texbox in a web UI?
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:48 PMthe code blocks themselves don't support typescript directly
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:49 PMthe main programming experience is the drag and drop low-code stuff
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:49 PMwhen you're using a function node it uses a Monaco editor in the web UI
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:49 PMMaybe I only work with complex customers, but I have yet to see a project that I could drag-n-drop without code somewhere.
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:50 PMOh for sure, but mostly for the integrations. That's why I've written the NetSuite node
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:50 PMbut we are doing lots of things with just the built-in flow nodes and set/merge nodes
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:51 PMWe primarily develop with Node and publish to npm so integrating has been very straightforward
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:51 PMThere are lots of options in this low-code space - did you consider others, and if so what motivated your choice to ultimately choose this one?
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:51 PMwe're able to leverage a lot of the javascript we've already written
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:52 PMI'm personally not interested in plain JS these days. If a tool doesn't support TypeScript either directly or indirectly then it's missed the boat imho
Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:53 PMtoo bad I guess - monaco supports TS so all they'd have to do is transpile it behind the scenes
Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 5:54 PManyway, not your fault 🙂
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:58 PMit looks like they use this to execute the code in a Function/FunctionItem node:
https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:59 PMlooks easy enough to add TS support
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 5:59 PMI'll work on a PR later
Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 6:05 PMwe've used several low code platforms in the past, including Zapier, Boomi, and Mulesoft. We always found them to be too expensive or inflexible. We're using n8n mostly for devops things right now, but we selected it mostly because it's open source and fits well into our existing toolset
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 6:34 PMare you hosting it yourself, or using their cloud option?
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 6:34 PMwe're self-hosting on AWS
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 6:34 PM10-4
Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 6:35 PMIn intrigued by Mulesoft - haven't used it professionally but I like what I've seen, relative to some of the other solutions
Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 6:35 PMI presume n8n is quite a bit less expensive though
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 8:12 PMQuick example workflow that utilizes the SuiteQL endpoint to query and built reports
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Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 8:45 PMnice NS icon 🙂
Shawn Talbert
05/20/2022, 8:46 PMI assume that is the 'netsuite' node you created?
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Nicholas Penree
05/20/2022, 8:46 PMcorrect
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michoel
05/23/2022, 8:36 PMI've been playing around with Micrsoft Power Automate for some none NetSuite related automation tasks the past couple of days and would love to see a NetSuite connector