Testing $vars locally without enterprise edition clean workaround?

Questions
,
1

Describe the problem/error/question

I want to run my workflow locally in Docker before deployment to Cloud. We have purchased a Cloud license and I have used Variables. However, these are not set, and cannot be set locally without an Enterprise licence.

I set the values as follows, with a hardcoded test value.

{
   "var_name": "{{ $vars.var_name !== undefined ? $vars.var_name : "my_test_value" }}"
}

Im new to n8n. Am I missing something, or is there a cleaner workaround?

Share the output returned by the last node

  1. Click Variables sidebar item on the local n8n instance
  2. “Available on the Enterprise Plan”

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: Community 1.63.4 / Cloud 1.61.0
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via Docker
  • Operating system:
2

It looks like your topic is missing some important information. Could you provide the following if applicable.

  • n8n version:
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):
  • Operating system:
3

Hi @daverussell

Unfortunately custom variables are not available on the community edition.

One work-around though, could be to use a “Set” node at the start of your workflow to define common variables. This is not recommended though for sensible data like credentials.

4

Thank you for the reply. I created a “set” node using the similar principal to set the variables using the expression. I chose simplicity albeit a more untidy hard-coded solution.

Im still discovering so I expected the principle of workflow-test in the webhooks to apply across all nodes. Which is why I thought I’d missed something.

Understandably, from a business perspective, it all point to subscribing to the enterprise version, though I thought subscribing to cloud would offer some extended features especially for testing.

Thank you again for your reply.