How do I use the metadata: {} field that's automatically in many of my automation actions?

Configuration
,
1

I was hoping to use the metadata field to store an input variable for use in the same action but it doesn’t seem to be working. Is this a feasible/reasonable use for it? Happy to hear any simple alternatives too, as my fallback is changing all the lines manually, haha (like hardcoding frigate instead of vmName works).

alias: Shutdown VM
action: rest_command.proxmox_vm_shutdown
metadata:
  vmName: frigate
data:
  vmid: "{{ (vm_list.content.data | select('search', vmName) | first).vmid }}"
  host: "{{ (vm_list.content.data | select('search', vmName) | first).node }}"
enabled: true
2
3

Thanks Jack! I checked that page a few times but found no reference to metadata. I tried using a variable section but that didn’t work either.

4

An excellent question.

It appears that is used to store data for the automation editor and is stripped out in core when execuing a service call (aka an action.)

So, i think you can put whatever you want in there since its just going to get discarded but it could foul up the automation editor.

5

Thanks Pete! I’ll just hardcode the multiple values inline then.