Are there any alternative UI front ends?

Configuration Frontend
1

I’m not sure what type of platform the front end is called in the programming world. For example, the YAML representing automations is obviously converted into python objects that are registered to respond to HA events. From what I gather, the developers wanted a system that non-programmers could easily add functionality.

The Lovelace platform similarly manages to abstract “unnecessary” concepts such as HTML elements and let’s people concentrate on building a UI. But with such simplicity one loses the ability to do something like add a card that uses a FOREACH loop to add UI elements like you can with Python/PHP.

Are you aware of any alternative platforms?

One thing I think would be useful would be a PHP/jinja2 card which would let you have the best of both worlds. Specify a file name which contains HTML and jinja2 code and you could render away to your hearts content.

Example: display 10 input booleans

{% for i in range(11) %}
{% set myBool = input_boolean.somebool[i] %}
{{ myBool[i] }} <HR/>
{% endfor %}

And as long as I’m dreaming, do something similarly for yaml declarations:

input_boolean:
  {% for i in range(11) %}
    frontdoor_notify_{{i}}
    name: 'Notify '{{i | string}}'
  {% endfor %}

And why stop there? Use a loop to specify the entity ids for an automation trigger.

2

The monster card card lets you use filters / multipule filters to pull in what ever you want.

You can code your own custom-cards if you want.

3

Alternatively, card-templater may do what you want: