Helpers - need a better way to organize and maintain

Feature Requests
1

Hi,

I have started using helpers in automation & scripts and it has made life super simple!!

But as my code base is growing in volume the number of helpers are leapfrogging. As of now, I’ve about 40 automations and close to 60 helpers and it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of helpers.

With helpers would it be possible to add a feature like nested tags (like Gmail), these tags can then be used for sorting display to show logical groupings of helpers?

Thanks.

2

You could always name your helpers with better descriptions, e.g. include the “tags” in the name or entity id.

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3

Yes, I’ve been trying to use more descriptive names to keep track of things but it gets harder. For example, I’ve few automations for the front door:

  1. Turn on the porch light if motion is detected after sunset
  2. Notify if the front porch lights have been on for more than 45 minutes
  3. TTS announce when front door opens

In each of these automation I’ve used bunch of helpers as timers or kill switches or toggles (for turning off notifications) to suit the logic for a given situation. So far I’m naming the entities starting with “front door” for identification. But it gets tricky when I just want to look at all the kill switches across the board or all the boolean inputs for TTS which are scattered all over the place.

Another thing that is making it harder is that once I have identified an helper, I’ve not found an easy way of searching for the file(s) in the midst of the complex maze of folders and sub-folders where this helper is used.

4

The “Add Label” features for helpers has solved this problem!

And as expected my favorite label is “testing”, now those runaway helpers have nowhere to hide :sunglasses:

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