Add On Configuration Not Quite Working -- Showing password and optional config not optional

Development
1

I created a simple add on to backup my Home Assistant backups to Azure using Restic. One thing that I noticed yesterday when I installed the add-on after testing locally was that the configuration page in HA wasn’t quite doing what I’d expect. In my config.yaml I’ve defined the following

options:
  storageaccount: null
  key: null
  containername: null
  folder: null
  repopassword: null
  days_to_keep: 90
schema:
  storageaccount: "str"
  key: "password"
  containername: "str"
  folder: "match(^[^/].*)?"
  repopassword: "password"
  days_to_keep: "int"

What I noticed is that folder was in fact optional on the configuration screen, but when I tried to start the add-on I got an error that there wasn’t a value set. As soon as I filled in the folder value everything was fine but I’m not sure why that’s not actually optional. I’d also tried "str?" as the schema and received the same result.

The other thing that I noticed is that key wasn’t being treated as a password, in fact it was being displayed in plain text on the screen. I have a sneaking suspicion that these two issues are related, but I’m not sure how to fix it. Any tips?

2

Try removing the fields you set to null in options. If the field exists it’s value is validated, even if it’s null. Optional means the field can be omitted without error but setting it to null isn’t the same thing. Plus I believe the values in options are merged with the user input on save to allow developers to change a default in an update if necessary.

So essentially try changing your config to this:

options:
  days_to_keep: 90
schema:
  storageaccount: "str"
  key: "password"
  containername: "str"
  folder: "match(^[^/].*)?"
  repopassword: "password"
  days_to_keep: "int"
1 Like
3

And here I thought that options and schema had to match. Changing to what you suggested did the trick for folder, but key is still showing as a plain text string and not a password. Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong there?

4

Tbh I wasn’t sure about that one. I actually wasn’t sure if displaying a password prompt was supported since I didn’t remember ever seeing one. But I wasn’t sure since most of my addons either have no configuration options or configuration options that only work in YAML (because they include nested objects or arrays) so I went looking through my own.

I did manage to find one though. I forgot the Hassio Google Drive Backup addon actually technically has UI-configurable options despite having a massive amount of options since they encourage you to do all configuration within the addon rather then on that tab. I noticed something interesting looking at it though, backup_password displays as a password prompt as you can see:

Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 9.28.22 AM
Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 9.28.22 AM1080×126 13.3 KB

But it actually isn’t declared as type password, it’s type str?

So I think it might make that decision based off the name rather then the type. If you change that option to repo_password do you get a password prompt then?

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5

It seems that you are indeed correct, even though password is documented as a schema type it’s not actually implemented.

By changing the field name I went from this

Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 8.48.37 AM
Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 8.48.37 AM537×570 10.2 KB

to this
Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 8.52.06 AM
Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 8.52.06 AM558×580 10.7 KB

I’ll take a read GitHub and maybe open an issue for this or propose a PR. Thanks for helping me figure this out!

2 Likes
6

Np glad to help.

I will admit this is confusing for sure. Clearly the schema is being accounted for in this UI since numbers and strings show different selectors but just not the password one for some reason.

It’s not entirely unimplemented since values in fields in the schema marked as type password are automatically run through the “Have I Been Pwned” check to see if they are vulnerable whereas fields marked as type str are not. But I agree that the UI should use that metadata as well and show a password prompt here.

Although I will note that the user always has a choice to switch from UI display to YAML mode. And in YAML mode there’s no way to hide the values for passwords from there. If it’s important to you and your users that the password here is unviewable by someone looking at this UI you might want to remind them in documentation that they can use !secret references in addon config in YAML mode.

1 Like
7

That’s a good point, I will leave it as-is. It’s not that important to hide it, and as you said it’s visible anyways with an ounce of effort.

1 Like