NodePlus Now a Part of HCL RTist 11

HCLSoftware is pleased to announce the next major version of HCL RTist – the Eclipse-based modeling and development environment for creating event-driven, real-time applications.

HCL RTist Version 11 runs on Eclipse 2019.06, which contains several improvements compared to Eclipse Photon that was used with version 10.3:

• For improvements in the Eclipse platform see:
  • 2018.09
  • 2018.12
  • 2019.03
  • 2019.06
• For improvements in Eclipse’s C++ tooling (CDT) see:
  • CDT 9.6
  • CDT 9.7
  • CDT 9.8
• For improvements in the Eclipse Git integration (EGit) see:
  • EGit 5.1
  • EGit 5.2
  • EGit 5.3
  • EGit 5.4

NodePlus

A major highlight in HCL RTist 11, NodePlus gives you all the necessary tooling for developing Internet of Things (IoT) applications with RTist.

You can use NodePlus for extending existing RTist applications with features often needed in IoT applications, such as communication with web servers, emitting MQTT events, accessing databases, etc. Even if such things could be done directly in the RTist application using C++, it is often significantly easier to do it in a language that is more commonly used for web-related tasks.

For example, NodePlus lets you develop using Node-RED, a popular “low code” tool where graphical flows of interconnected nodes can realize sophisticated functionality without almost writing a single line of code. Thousands of pre-made nodes are available for free online, and one can simply drag-and-drop them into an application to use them. Learn more about Node-RED here.

NodePlus also provides three custom nodes that let you integrate your RTist application with Node-RED:

• ‘rtist request’: The ‘rtist request’ node allows a flow to send or invoke an event into an RTist application.
• ‘rtist receive’: The ‘rtist receive’ node triggers a flow when receiving an event that is sent or invoked from an RTist application.
• ‘rtist response’: The ‘rtist response’ node replies to a received event that was sent or invoked from an RTist application.

Node-RED runs as a Node.js application, and NodePlus also supports general development of Node.js applications.

This includes a wizard for creating Node.js projects, as well as, the ability to create, start and stop a Node.js server from within the Eclipse workbench. NodePlus includes a new editor for developing HTML pages for your Node.js application using the Pug template engine. It also allows you to debug Node.js applications with a modern JavaScript debugger as seen below.

NodePlus also features Swagger support, allowing you to document REST APIs using an integrated Swagger editor.

Join the HCL RTist team for a complimentary webinar on Tuesday, May 5 at noon EDT, as we do a deeper dive into HCL RTist 11.