Automation Service Call

1

There is the strangest thing happening in an automation when calling the service 'Variable: Set. I am simply trying the increment the value of a variable. The variable is initialized to zero (0). Whenever I enter a template as a value_template: it is saved with no errors but when I close and reopen the automation, the template has disappeared and replaced with some unintelligible (to me) text.

My automation action:


service: var.set
data:
  entity_id: var.rising_temp_active
  value_template: {{ states('var.rising_temp_active') | int() +1}}

What it becomes after saving and reopening:


service: var.set
data:
  entity_id: var.rising_temp_active
  value_template:
    '[object Object]': null

This has been fixed. I cannot tell you why. The only differences I see are double quotes around the entity, which I variously tried before and single quotes around the entire template, which I also tried before. Now I used float instead of integer, only because I was using a working template from a script as a model and it had float. Still no errors ever occurred on saving the automation but then this is not the only place error checking seems to be failing in this HA release.


service: var.set
data:
  entity_id: var.rising_temp_active
  value: '{{ states( "var.falling_temp_active" ) | float(0) +1 }}'
2

You do not have a default value defined

3

True but in several different iterations of this code, there was a default value.

4

Silgle line templates must be enclosed in quotes, so this

value_template: {{ states('var.rising_temp_active') | int() +1}}

Should be (with alternative type quotes):

value_template: "{{ states('var.rising_temp_active') | int() +1}}"

Or (with escaped single quotes):

value_template: ''{{ states('var.rising_temp_active') | int() +1}}''

If you do this:

value_template: '{{ states('var.rising_temp_active') | int() +1}}'

All you get is:

value_template: '{{ states('
1 Like
5

Okay that makes sense. Thanks for that. It seems as though that when you enter a template via UI, you have to leave off the quotes enclosing the entire template but when viewing in yaml mode, the quotes have been added. Conversely, if you add quotes in UI mode, the yaml appears with a duplicate set of quotes which is then translated as a literal with the result of the template being the text of the template. Templates tested in Developer Tools/Template usually work with or without quotes but may not work when used as a template argument. I suppose context is the reason for this.