How to visualize and manage long and complex Node-RED flows?

Problem

I have a very large Node-RED flow. It is very confusing to navigate through it.

Solution

A big point about structuring is not to make the flows too long and not too complicated (and especially not to store states in Node-RED).

Recommendations:

• Always pulling data from MQTT / Kafka
• Doing small processing and then writing the result back (if it still makes sense in terms of content).

For example:

1. A flow just for data extraction.
2. Then a flow that processes the raw data.
3. Finally one that does something with it again (e.g., execute actions).

Extra: this is described in the following video