State.context to UI automation

[frits1980 (Frits)]

I explained my use case. And for now I would settle with the condition of an automation. In the future maybe also in the choose of an action too.

But my feature request is not about how to do it (because it is clear to me that it can be done with templating), it is about to be able to do it in the UI without any templating knowledge. Just like some other features you can do in the UI these days. Which weren’t possible in the past.

I’m just hoping some developer sees this as useful and easy to implement for a future iteration of the automation UI. I can imagine other people have use cases for this since there are a lot of people having automations and dashboards with switches to change entities.

[petro]

@frits1980

And for now I would settle with the condition of an automation. In the future maybe also in the choose of an action too.

Chooses and conditions would go hand and hand. They use the same code.

@frits1980

it is about to be able to do it in the UI without any templating knowledge

And this simply won’t be possible in messages, which would be the other place you’d want to use it outside of triggers and conditions.

The best case you’ll get here is a simple template variable that contains the context in a friendly manner without writing code. Unfortunately, if you want to use custom messages with information extracted from the automation/script, you’ll need to use templating. That’s why templating was added into HA in the first place.

[frits1980 (Frits)]

I don’t know why we are talking about messages. I’m not talking about it. I just want to be able to except some automations from executing if a entity switch on my dashboard is flipped by a user.

[petro]

Ok, and here we are 20 posts later and you finally gave out the actual Feature Requests.

You want to be able to use the context as a condition in automations and scripts without templates.

@frits1980

I don’t know why we are talking about messages.

That’s why I’ve been saying…

@petro

This is very vague.

There’s hundreds of different ways to use context in an automation through templating. Conditions are but a small aspect of it. This is why I’ve been trying to get your exact use case out. Because you’re not explaining yourself well, and there’s hundreds of different ways this Feature Requests can be interpreted.

[frits1980 (Frits)]

Well maybe I’m just bad at explaining. And also not fully understand what context can do more then what I need it for.

[mbuscher]

This nugget was very useful, thank you! With this I can now differentiate the 3 ways a device’s state was changed.

Here is a sample implementation using the choose action:

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - switch.office
condition: []
action:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.id != none }}'
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.parent_id == none }}'
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.user_id == none }}'
        sequence:
          - service: system_log.write
            data:
              level: debug
              message: Physical device
    default: []
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.id != none }}'
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.parent_id == none }}'
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.user_id != none }}'
        sequence:
          - service: system_log.write
            data:
              level: debug
              message: HA user interface
    default: []
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.id != none }}'
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.parent_id != none }}'
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ trigger.to_state.context.user_id == none }}'
        sequence:
          - service: system_log.write
            data:
              level: debug
              message: HA automation
    default: []
mode: restart

[mbuscher]

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. @tom_l provided the information I was missing.

[Ev000]

In the UI, Event trigger have context input (Limit to events triggered by user)
You can read in the doc (https://data.home-assistant.io/docs/context/) context exist for events AND states
Why there is not the same input/field for the state trigger ?

I made 2 design to use the context in UI.
The user input is to choose user_id (Any user for != none and No user for == none), the original trigger is to choose parent_id (itself for == none, Automation/Script for != none)

[mwaterbu]

This would be very helpful, and I think modeling the UI similar to the existing event UI makes the most sense. The only addition I would make would be to add None to the trigger dropdown for cases where the change occurred outside of HA (someone interacted with the physical device).

[somogyvari.zoltan (Zoltan Somogyvari)]

Does something changed till this time? Automation related events, drops physical output for me now.

[tom_l]

I am using the exact conditions listed above to detect physical operation of my light switches. Still works perfectly.

[somogyvari.zoltan (Zoltan Somogyvari)]

Yes, physical & UI opertation works fine, but automation related drops also physical for me.

[tom_l]

@somogyvari.zoltan

but automation related drops also physical for me.

Could you try rephrasing this or giving an example?

I don’t understand what you mean.

[somogyvari.zoltan (Zoltan Somogyvari)]

I’ve triggered an automation by time, to flip the test switch in the code, and the result was Physical device, not HA automation. I’ve expected the HA automation output not Physical device.

For some strange reason if I trigger it with a motion sensor it gives me HA automation output.

[petro]

time triggers don’t have context. The result will always be none, none, none.

[somogyvari.zoltan (Zoltan Somogyvari)]

Ah, that is the explain it! Many thanks!

[tom_l]

Yeah this will not work for all automation triggers. The trigger has to have an entity or device it can call a parent, so context.parent_id is available for:

• Event trigger
• Home Assistant trigger
• MQTT trigger
• Numeric state trigger
• State trigger
• Sun trigger
• Tag trigger
• Template trigger
• Time trigger
• Time pattern trigger
• Persistent notification trigger
• Webhook trigger
• Zone trigger
• Geolocation trigger
• Device triggers
• Calendar trigger
• Sentence trigger

This is an untested list and based on my understanding of how the parent context id is generated.

[weberjam]

I believe this might have fixed a race condition I had which was caused by an online-only integration sometime responding slowly. I’ll report if I have any issues. Thank you to everyone who has contributed!

[clowgg]

Thanks for documenting this @mbuscher.
I have the automation working when I press the physical wall switch on my Fibaro switch device.
My question is where are the log entries written? I can’t see them in the System Log or the Logbook. Is there a config you have to do to see the Debug entries?

Another question: How you recommend using this physical switch detection method in a lighting automation to switch that automation to a ‘manual mode’ that disables the motion-based triggers until the physical light switch is turned off again?

[mbuscher]

Those DEBUG messages nowadays should appear after pressing the LOAD FULL LOGS button of HOME ASSISTANT CORE under System → Logs. Sorry, I currently don’t have any actual DEBUG messages set up but the following screen shots should give you an idea.

Re 2nd question: in the past I used one of the state machines of node-red for this kind of logic. Don’t have it anymore as it got too complicated for simple me.