Add attribute to input_* helpers

[DvdNwk]

I’m not that long to actually know the legacy here, but my understanding is that HA used to use attributes extensively – in the way you’re describing. BUT, attributes were considered cumbersome (to use? extract data? track?) and there was a move to split attributes to separate entities and “group” them into devices. I may be wrong here, anyway…

I don’t mind separate entities, but I still have a need for “grouping” them → hence I’d hope “devices” were much easier to work with in HA.

Check this out:

Device Tools: Create, Modify and Merge Devices

Devices and their pages are a great way to group entities and see relevant information about a physical device in one glance. Unfortunately many custom and core integration are not using the built in ways to reuse existing devices or attach lose entities to their associated device. Also users are not allowed to manually create devices or override device attributes in any way although sometimes this functionality would be helpful with better representing the actual physical device’s information…

EDIT:

Actually, when I think about it, it makes sense to have separate entities – as each can have its own “attributes” (or: “metadata”) – like if the value is a temperature, the helper (entity) can have metadata that says that (and what unit) → while if it was just an attribute of a bigger entity, then we’d have to have a way to set “attributes on attributes”