If-else Executes Both Options

Configuration
1

Has anyone seen an if-else block executing the code on both the then and the else sides on an automation?

This automation simply turns the lights on at sunset and off at sunrise. The surprising thing is that once every few days it will execute light.turn_on in the then block and continue to also execute light.turn_off inside the else block.

alias: Night Lighting - Outside
description: Turns on or off the outside lights according to time of day
trigger:
  - platform: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: '00:15:00'
    id: sunset
  - platform: sun
    event: sunrise
    offset: '-00:15:00'
    id: sunrise
condition: []
action:
  - if:
      - condition: trigger
        id: sunset
    then:
      - service: light.turn_on
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id: light.front_lights_switch
    else:
      - service: light.turn_off
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id: light.front_lights_switch
mode: single

In this trace you can see that both sides of the if-else ran during the same triggering:

image

Any ideas?

2

I think if/then is only supported in scripts, not in automations. Not sure why it doesn’t throw an error, unless you are just testing and haven’t restarted HA since adding?

Read this:

I could of course be wrong, haven’t written automations for a while…

3

Weird - it usually works but fails once every few days…

I’d just try two automations, one for sunset, one for sunrise - impossible to do both actions as each would just have one action!

Life is too short :blush:

1 Like
4

not true.

scripts are just simply the action section of an automation. All options in scripts are valid for the action section of an automation.

the automation docs also pretty much states as much:

Automation Actions

The action of an automation rule is what is being executed when a rule fires. The action part follows the script syntax which can be used to interact with anything via services or events. For services you can specify the entity_id that it should apply to and optional service parameters (to specify for example the brightness).

1 Like
5

That’s one interpretation of what happened. Here’s another:

When Home Assistant turns on an entity, the entity must acknowledge the command. If the acknowledgement isn’t received promptly, Home Assistant sets the entity back to its original state (off).

Notice in the Trace Timeline that it indicates

Call Service ‘Light: Turn on’ Front lights

then it reports it turned on the entities followed by turning them off. There’s no indication of

Call Service ‘Light: Turn off’ Front lights

FWIW, you can reduce the automation to this:

alias: Night Lighting - Outside
description: Turns on or off the outside lights according to time of day
trigger:
  - platform: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: '00:15:00'
  - platform: sun
    event: sunrise
    offset: '-00:15:00'
condition: []
action:
  - service: "light.turn_{{ iif(trigger.event == 'sunset', 'on', 'off') }}"
    target:
      entity_id: light.front_lights_switch
mode: single
2 Likes
6

That makes sense. It must be that the trace is informing of the state correction when there’s acknowledgment delay, not about calling the light.turn_off service.

Thanks!

1 Like