Change in Automation Restful Command syntax?

Configuration
1

I have a number of automations running that send HA data to my home automation system via Restful Command. Works perfectly fine.
This is an example of a working Restful Command Yaml in an automation:

action: rest_command.fc_miniserver
metadata: {}
data: >-
  Forecast Today: {{states('sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_today')}},
  Forecast Today Remaining:
  {{states('sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_remaining_today')}}, Forecast
  Remaining Low:
  {{state_attr('sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_remaining_today','estimate10')}},
  Forecast Remaining High:
  {{state_attr('sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_remaining_today','estimate90')}},
  Forecast Tomorrow: {{states('sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_tomorrow')}},
  Forecast Last Polled:
  {{as_timestamp(states('sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_api_last_polled'))}}

Just now I wanted to add a similar Restful Command action to an automation, using the same syntax:

action: rest_command.geo_miniserver
metadata: {}
data: >-
  Arriving Home: {{(states('sensor.home_iphone_patrick_direction_of_travel') ==
  'arrived')|int}}

No matter what I try, I keep getting error message:

“Error running action
Error rendering data template: Result is not a Dictionary”

and I notice that where my automations with Restful Command that are working, show as

RESTful Command ‘rest_command.fc_miniserver’

in the automation editor, the ‘new’ Restful Command shows as

RESTful Command ‘rest_command.geo_miniserver’ on templated target

I’m totally lost as for where the ‘templated target’ suddenly comes from, what I’m doing wrong here or what may have changed in very recent updates…
Note: the template executes perfectly fine in the developer tools template editor.

Thanks in advance for shedding some light on this…

2

Try removing the >-. Unless I’m completely missing something, I’m confused by how it ever worked.

3

Thanks Dominic. I tried that and the editor re-inserts > (without the hyphen), but the error message is still the same.

4

What about this:

action: rest_command.geo_miniserver
metadata: {}
data:
  "Arriving Home": "{{(states('sensor.home_iphone_patrick_direction_of_travel') == 'arrived')|int}}"

Here’s why I’m confused… although I don’t use restful commands myself, the example here shows that the data field to a rest_command entity should be a dictionary. But the >- makes the data field a multi-line string.

The attempt above is to correctly use quote marks… maybe the problem is that the GUI sees your {{ }} without quotations and assumes that you somehow want a multi-line string, not a dictionary.

If that doesn’t work… perhaps someone else who’s more familiar with restful commands and/or the GUI editor can figure out what’s going on.

5

Hi Dominic,
Thank you for your help.
I have been trying numerous variations on your suggestion, but could not get it to work.
Finally, I made a duplicate of one of the similar automations that were working correctly and I replaced all the variables for my new purpose.
That automation then worked fine…
So to find out the difference between my new, failing automation and the old working automations I took a look at the yaml file for the whole automation and saw that for the working (older) automations, the call to the restful command is repeated in the data section:

action: rest_command.geo_miniserver
metadata: {}
data:
  action: rest_command.geo_miniserver
  metadata: {}
  data: >-
    Patrick Home:
    {{(states('device_tracker.iphone_patrick')=='home')|int|string}}, Patrick
    Arriving Home:
    {{(states('sensor.home_iphone_patrick_direction_of_travel')=='arrived')|int|string}},
    Patrick Leaving Home:
    {{(states('sensor.home_iphone_patrick_direction_of_travel')=='away_from')|int|string}}

I have no clue whether or not this is supposed to be the case (would think not), but anyway, with this this syntax it’s working like a charm.
It also makes me think that with the most recent HA updates something has changed in the processing of the automation editor when one creates a new automation…

So, my problem is solved for now, but I’m not sure where to take this if it potentially could be a bug.

Again, thank you for your help!