Escape degree sign in PHP cURL to HASS virtual sensor?

Configuration
1

This seems like a very dumb question, but i cannot figure out how to get it solved.

I have a PHP-script that updates a virtual sensor in my HASS setup:

<?php
$temp = '19';
$tempfloat = floatval($temp);

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://192.168.4.13:8123/api/states/sensor.buitentemperatuur");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "{\"state\": \"$tempfloat\", \"attributes\": {\"unit_of_measurement\": \"°C\", \"friendly_name\": \"Buitentemperatuur\"}}");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

$headers = array();
$headers[] = "X-Ha-Access:";
$headers[] = "Content-Type: application/json";
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);

$result = curl_exec($ch);
if (curl_errno($ch)) {
    echo 'Error:' . curl_error($ch);
}
curl_close ($ch);
```
It updates the temperature nicely, but the degree sign is messed up, as it displays as '19 �C'.

I tried with '&deg;' in the PHP-code, but it didn't work. 

Can someone please enlighten me how to get a correct degree sign (°) in HASS by using this PHP-script?
I'm also not sure if the value is being put in HASS as a float, even though i put in the `floatval()` part. How can i check if it is? If it is put in as a string, that would make it unuseable to use in a automation :stuck_out_tongue:
1 Like
2

I don’t profess to know what HASS does on the front end but have you tried: http://uk.php.net/htmlentities

or urlencode() the value?

1 Like
3

As for your float issue you need to remove the quotes around that in your json that is transfered :slight_smile:

4

i think its probably better to just update the value from the sensor.
the unit of measurement is then set just 1 time in the config as a customize from the sensor.buitentemperatuur

1 Like
5

That seems like a good idea, but how would i put it into my HASS config?
I tried this:

- platform: template
  sensors:
    buitentemperatuur:
      unit_of_measurement: '°C'

But then HASS won’t even start: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 1737: invalid start byte

I also tried with double quotes around the value like here, but that didn’t work either.

6

You need to make sure you have the right encoding in your text editor…those symbols are always kind of tricky

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7

i think it must be something like this.
youre PHP must make a sensor buitentemperatuur and the template connects to that.
and it must have a different name

sensor:
  platform: template
  sensors:
    buitentemp:
      friendly_name: buiten temperatuur
      value_template: '{{ states.sensor.buitentemperatuur.state }}'
      unit_of_measurement: '°C'
1 Like
8

SOLVED!

It was indeed a problem with encoding. I always edit my .yaml’s with the built-in editor of WinSCP, so i can edit the files directly on the VM that HASS is running in.
In WinSCP i opened the file with an external editor (Sublime Text 3, nice syntax marking), copied and pasted the Celsius markup part from here and clicked ‘Save with encoding’ and chose ‘UTF-8’. Then HASS would boot without problems and displayed a nice degree symbol :smiley:

Further i setup the sensor like ReneTode mentioned:

- platform: template
  sensors:
    buitentemperatuur:
      value_template: '{{ states.sensor.buitentemperatuur.state }}'
      unit_of_measurement: '°C'
      friendly_name: 'Buitentemperatuur'

and just update only the state of it with this:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "{\"state\": $tempfloat}");

I think i need to adjust my workflow a bit by using Sublime Text as my default editor always :stuck_out_tongue:
Thanks everyone!

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