Templating and YAML woes

Configuration
1

Hi,

I’m trying to put a script together but something is wrong in my formatting that I can’t find. this is the error:

“Failed to perform the action script/vestaboard_message_with_options. expected a dictionary @ data[‘vbml’][‘components’][0]”

I can’t figure out why the components block isn’t showing as a dictionary. I know it has something to do with my templating, but I don’t know why.

Thanks

sequence:
  - variables:
      alert_color: |-
        {% set mappings = {
          'none':'{0}',
          'red':'{63}',
          'blue':'{67}',
          'green':'{66}',
          'yellow':'{65}',
          'orange':'{64}',
          'violet':'{68}',
          'white':'{69}'
        } %} "{{ mappings.get(alert, '{63}') }}"
    enabled: true
  - action: vestaboard.message
    metadata: {}
    data:
      device_id:
        - id1231231
      vbml:
        props:
          text: "{{ words }}"
          alert_color: "{{ alert_color }}"
          date: "{{ as_timestamp(now())|timestamp_custom('%d') }}"
          month: "{{ as_timestamp(now())|timestamp_custom('%b') }}"
          hours: "{{ as_timestamp(now())|timestamp_custom('%H') }}"
          day: "{{ as_timestamp(now())|timestamp_custom('%A') }}"
          minutes: "{{ as_timestamp(now())|timestamp_custom('%M') }}"
          temp: "{{ state_attr('weather.openweather','temperature') | int}}"
          temp_color: >-
            {% if state_attr('weather.openweather','temperature') | float <= 32
            %}
              {69}
            {% elif state_attr('weather.openweather','temperature') | float <=
            55 %}
              {67}
            {% elif state_attr('weather.openweather','temperature') | float <=
            75 %}
              {66}
            {% elif state_attr('weather.openweather','temperature') | float <=
            90 %}
              {65}
            {% else %}
              {63}
            {% endif %}
        components: |-
          {% if alert != 'none' %}
            - style:
                justify: center
                align: center
                width: 22
                height: 5
              template: "{{ alert_color * 22 }}"
            - style:
                justify: center
                align: center
                width: 1
                height: "{{ '3' if status_bar else '4' }}"
              template: "{{ (alert_color * 3) if status_bar else (alert_color * 4) }}"
          {% endif %}
          - style:
              justify: center
              align: center
              width: "{{ '20' if alert != 'none' else '22' }}"
              height: >-
                {% if alert != 'none' and status_bar %}
                  3
                {% elif status_bar %}
                  5
                {% elif alert != 'none' %}
                  4
                {% else %}
                  6
                {% endif %}
            template: "{{ '{{text}}' }}"
          {% if alert != 'none' %}
            - style:
                justify: center
                align: center
                width: 1
                height: "{{ '3' if status_bar else '4' }}"
              template: "{{ (alert_color * 3) if status_bar else (alert_color * 4) }}"
            - style:
                justify: center
                align: center
                width: 22
                height: 5
              template: "{{ alert_color * 22 }}"
          {% endif %}
          {% if status_bar %}
            - style:
                justify: left
                align: center
                width: 5
                height: 1
              template: "{{ '{{date}}{{month}}' }}"
            - style:
                justify: center
                align: center
                width: 12
                height: 1        
              template: "{{ '{{day}}' }}"
            - style:
                justify: right
                align: center
                width: 5
                height: 1        
              template: "{{ '{{temp}}{62}{{temp_color}}' }}"  
          {% endif %}
fields:
  words:
    selector:
      text: null
    description: The text to display on the Vestaboard
    required: true
  status_bar:
    selector:
      boolean: {}
    description: Show the Date, Day, and temp status bar at the bottom
    default: false
  alert:
    selector:
      select:
        options:
          - none
          - red
          - blue
          - green
          - yellow
          - orange
          - violet
          - white
    default: none
alias: Vestaboard - Message with Options
description: >-
  Lets to send a basic message, with the option to add an alert frame, and a
  status bar.
2

You cannot interlace YAML into Jinja like you are doing. You need to rewrite the whole components: section. You can try changing the interlaced YAML parts to JSON, but that is always much more error-prone than doing it in pure Jinja. I’d recommend the latter.

3

Thank you for the help.

When changing it to JSON, is there a guide for that? Or a good example? Ideally one with Jinja interspersed so I can build the conditional parts of the JSON

Thanks Again

4

I think my issue at this point is indenting? I was under the impression that indenting did not matter with JSON, but apparently that is incorrect.

If someone could help me by giving the proper format for this, I think I can put it together from here.

I’ve simplified this greatly so there are only a few things to look at. If I change 1 == 1 to 1 ==2, then it works and I get no error.

But with 1 == 1 (thus attempting to add in the extra JSON block, I get “Failed to perform the action script/vestaboard_message_with_options. expected a dictionary @ data[‘vbml’][‘components’][0]”

    components: |-
      {
        "style": {
          "justify": "center",
          "align": "center",
          "width": "{{ '20' if alert != 'none' else '22' }}",
          "height": "{% if alert != 'none' and status_bar %}3{% elif status_bar %}5{% elif alert != 'none' %}4{% else %}6{% endif %}"
        },
        "template": "{{ '{{text}}' }}"
        {%- if 1 == 1 -%}
          },
          {
            "style": {
              "justify": "left",
              "align": "center",
              "width": 5,
              "height": 1
            },
            "template": "{{  '{{date}}{{month}}' }}"
          {%- endif -%}    
      }

Don’t mind the extra curly brackets, that’s a function of the Vestaboard formatting and has already been checked to make sure it’s not causing the error.

Thanks

5

Indenting shouldn’t matter in JSON, but HA can be picky when reinterpreting the output from a template… Most often it is easier to construct the whole dict/list as a variable in Jinja, and then at the very end letting Jinja output the dict/list.

In this particular case though your code isn’t outputting one dict, it would be outputting two dicts separated by a comma. The output of your last template above would result in something like this:

{"style": {...}, "template": "{{text}}"}, {"style:" {...}, "template": "{{date}}{{month}}"}