Extracting data from rest sensor JSON array

Configuration
1

Hi everyone,
Ill admit I’m pretty amateur with coding and such, and am having a hard time figuring something out. Most of what I’ve got so far is thanks to chatGpt (lol) and trial and error.

Basically I want to use the API from a site which returns a JSON response that is essentially 2 main items, a status value showing successful request, and the second item is an array of contact list entries. The response looks like this:

{“status”:“success”,“phonebooks”:[{“phonebook”:“1237455”,“speed_dial”:“”,“name”:“John Doe”,“number”:“5551234567”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“Test entry”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1237456”,“speed_dial”:“”,“name”:“John Doe2”,“number”:“5551234567”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“Test entry”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1237640”,“speed_dial”:“”,“name”:“Jonnyscript”,“number”:“555123456”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1237659”,“speed_dial”:“”,“name”:“Jonnyscripttes2”,“number”:“555123457”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1236206”,“speed_dial”:“*7501”,“name”:“Test addtl contact entry”,“number”:“6476015230”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1237631”,“speed_dial”:“*7562”,“name”:“Joey4”,“number”:“5551234567”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“Test entry”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1237632”,“speed_dial”:“*7563”,“name”:“Joey5”,“number”:“5551234567”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“Test entry”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1235981”,“speed_dial”:“*7597”,“name”:“Test Auto Entry Reocrding”,“number”:“6476015230”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1234298”,“speed_dial”:“*7598”,“name”:“test8”,“number”:“5555555”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”},{“phonebook”:“1233925”,“speed_dial”:“*7599”,“name”:“Me”,“number”:“555555”,“callerid”:“”,“note”:“”,“group”:“0”,“group_name”:“”}]}

Which I pretty much understand, each item in the array is an entry, with its own sub entries of Id, name number etc.

At this point I have a rest sensor set up in my config that works by doing value_template(value_JSON: status)
Which makes the sensor value ‘Success’

And then has json_attributes: -phonebooks

Which seems to return the contact list entries in a more readable format like this:

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So far so good I think. The thing I can’t figure out now is how to take those entries and values, and basically work with them in HA. I want to make a sort of display on a dashboard that will list each entry and its associated data.
Is there an efficient way I could do this, sorry I’ve had no luck so far.

Should I have pulled the data a different way?

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You can use multiple solutions.

Markdown card gives you all the flexibility but this is not that easy to ‘code’ and becomes quite blurry imo … but it does allow you to group (e.g. below a contact) as an example

Other option is flex-table card which is really powerfull too and there are quite a lot of examples on how to do things
Flex-table-card - Share your Projects! / Dashboards & Frontend - Home Assistant Community

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Markdown vs flex-table-card

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Thanks for that, I did look at flex table last night and tried to mess around but I’ll also give markdown a look too. I’d be happy to make it into a table format

Do you think pulling all the entries first into the sensor state’s attributes was alright for first step?

Would those methods have the ability to pull the specific data points from the giant attribute string? Even if the amount of entries there may change later?

Or should I find a way to convert the attribute there into seperate entries and stuff first then figure out how to display it later?

I appreciate any help or other resource links, sometimes I don’t even know how to word my search lol

EDIT After reading over your methods, the Flex table ended up working well to format everything nicely and sort it