Drag & drop from Knime Hub to workflow blocked by company firewall. Download option is not available. What next?

[akos_groller]

I see several community contributed nodes (example: Write to Excel Template) that I would love to use. However, they often only offer Drag & Drop, not Download, for importing them to my workflows. That’s a blocker to me – company firewall only allows download via browser, not any random app like Knime accessing the Internet. I’m sure there are many other users in the same situation.

Would it be possible to always provide a Download link, not just the (fancy and trendy and useless) Drag & Drop? I’m just as happy if a valid download link can be generated by inspecting the web page source, but so far I failed with that attempt.

[mlauber71]

@akos_groller welcome to the KNIME forum. You will have to install extensions. If you are behind a firewall you might have to download the extensions as a local ZIP file and instal them locally:

https://docs.knime.com/latest/analytics_platform_installation_guide/index.html#_adding_local_update_sites

You can also download the examples and import them into KNIME:

HOW TO CONNECT KNIME HUB KNIME

@gabrielfs2 this very much sounds like a proxy or firewall is blocking the access. What you could do is download the examples from the KNIME Hub: [image] … and import the resulting .knar or .knwf file by hand: [How to import and export KNIME Workflows]

[akos_groller]

Thanks, however:

• Local ZIP for full extension population appears to work. Yet it has massive overhead and does not allow handpicking my favorites.
• Example workflow is not always available, not to mention the same firewall blocks me from using components linked to the Knime Hub.

So any direct solution (like a site-level option to always show download links, not drag-and-drop links) would still be much appreciated.

[mlauber71]

@akos_groller

like a site-level option to always show download links, not drag-and-drop links

The examples are always there to download - you best log in with your account on the KNIME Hub as well as on the forum.

@akos_groller

firewall blocks

KNIME can work with proxy servers if they are available. Other than that once can debate how best to provide the additional extensions to be installed from a local ZIP file. One could split them up more but then it might not be so easy to find the right one.

[akos_groller]

@mlauber71

one can debate how best to provide the additional extensions

I see that, and I see how that is where my current, personal preferences might not scale out well to supporting the overall community. Probably the right approach within the existing model would be to get our infrastructure teams include more extensions into our company deployment via internal repository, rather than altering the way the Knime Hub exposes these artifacts. (I do see the maintenance benefit of drag & drop and thus linked components when Knime app is allowed to follow those links.)

On that account I’m marking your last reply as a solution.

For the records: the likely detour I’ll take is downloading the extension on a private computer and mailing to my corporate account, which is both feasible and legit per our company setup.