Template sensor not updating

Configuration
1

I’ve been trying all sorts of things to set a template sensor successfully, and am at the end of my tether. I currently have two sensors set up that contain the info for the weekend “juniors” films at my local cinemas. Thee get populated by two Python scripts, and I end up with each one having a state that is a json object of the films and times.

From this I’m trying to get (for now) another entity to populate using a template sensor, so that I can pull the info out into a card on the front end. My problem is that the scripts take a few seconds to run, and the template sensor fires first and gives back an “Unknown” value. Here the info that I have for the template sensor:

  - platform: template
    sensors:
      cinema_cineworld_sun_film:
        value_template: '{% if states.sensor.cinema__cineworld_juniors %} {{ cinema__cineworld_juniors["cineworld"]["sun"]["1"]["name"] }} {% endif %}'
        friendly_name: Cineworld Sun Film

Note that the {% if clause is new, in the hope that it would not fire until the main entity was populated.

Here’s an example of the json object:

{"cineworld": {"sat": {}, "sun": {"1": {"name": "Ferdinand", "time": "10:00"}, "2": {"name": "The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature", "time": "10:10"}}}}

And the info from the logs:

2018-03-11 19:57:30 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event state_changed[L]: entity_id=sensor.cinema_empire_sun_film, old_state=None, new_state=<state sensor.cinema_empire_sun_film=unknown; friendly_name=Cineworld Sun Film @ 2018-03-11T19:57:30.026761+00:00>>
2018-03-11 19:57:33 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event state_changed[L]: entity_id=sensor.cinema__cineworld_juniors, old_state=None, new_state=<state sensor.cinema__cineworld_juniors={"cineworld": {"sat": {}, "sun": {"1": {"name": "Ferdinand", "time": "10:00"}, "2": {"name": "The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature", "time": "10:10"}}}}; friendly_name=Cinema - Cineworld Juniors @ 2018-03-11T19:57:33.015868+00:00>>
2018-03-11 19:57:35 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event state_changed[L]: entity_id=sensor.cinema__empire_juniors, old_state=None, new_state=<state sensor.cinema__empire_juniors={"empire": {"sat": {}, "sun": {"1": {"name": "Ferdinand", "time": "10:00"}, "2": {"name": "No film name available", "time": "10:10"}}}}; friendly_name=Cinema - Empire Juniors @ 2018-03-11T19:57:35.382883+00:00>>

The Python scripts run about once a minute, but the template never gets updated.

Is there any way of getting this to recognise that the main entities have been populated and then updates with the right info?

2

Hmm, just been looking at other ways of doing what I want, i.e. a card on the front end with cinema times, and found this thread which may be an alternative route to go down: Display only text in card

3

Shouldn’t you be accessing the actual state?!? I believe it should be:

cinema__cineworld_juniors["cineworld"]["sun"]["1"]["name"].state
4

{{ states.sensor.cinema__cineworld_juniors.attributes.cineworld.sun.1.name }}

use the template editor to see it

5

Thanks both for your advice.

@mvdkleijn you were correct in that in order to get just the state (rather than all of the other properties as well) I need to add .state at the end.

@petro the template editor was working when I set a variable to my JSON object, with square brackets, but it also works with the dot notation (although one needs to put digits within [’’]) which was something I wasn’t aware of, thanks.

After all this, I now see what the problem is.

I’ve got a new sensor, sensor.empire_data with a state of {"empire": {"sat": {"1": {"name": "No film name available", "time": "10:10"}, "2": {"name": "Gnomeo and Juliet", "time": "10:20"}}, "sun": {"1": {"name": "No film name available", "time": "10:10"}, "2": {"name": "Gnomeo and Juliet", "time": "10:20"}}}}, which was created using the template sensor.

The problem seems to be that HA doesn’t consider this a JSON object. Testing via the Template editor I can retrieve what looks like a JSON object using {{ states.sensor.empire_data.state }}

However, using {{ states.sensor.empire_data.state.empire.sat }} (or the [] notation) gives me the error:

Error rendering template: UndefinedError: 'str object' has no attribute 'empire'

So, it seems to me that, even though I’ve populated that state using a value_template, HA considers it a string, rather than a JSON object, and as such I don’t have access to the values. This seems contradictory to the info on https://home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/templating/ (at the bottom, under “Processing incoming data”) and I now have now idea how to get it to treat it as JSOn instead of a string.

Just to be clear, the template sensor code that works is this:

  - platform: template
    sensors:
      empire_data:
        value_template: "{{ states('sensor.cinema__empire_juniors') }}"
        friendly_name: Empire

and it gives me a state of

{"empire": {"sat": {"1": {"name": "No film name available", "time": "10:10"}, "2": {"name": "Gnomeo and Juliet", "time": "10:20"}}, "sun": {"1": {"name": "No film name available", "time": "10:10"}, "2": {"name": "Gnomeo and Juliet", "time": "10:20"}}}}

Any more ideas from anyone?

6

Can I ask where you’re getting this sensor.cinema__cineworld_juniors ? is this a component?