Using a text input on a blueprint template

Configuration Blueprints
1

I’m creating a somewhat complex template blue print and I’m having an issue using the text selector in a template (jinja). I was able to reproduce using a much simpler blueprint.

So I have this blueprint:

blueprint:
  name: Text Input Tester
  description: Testing how to use a text input in a template
  domain: template
  input:
    test_text:
      name: Test Text
      description: The text to text with.
      selector:
        text:
    test_trigger_entity:
      name: Test Trigger Entity
      description: The entity to trigger this test
      selector:
        entity:
          filter:
            domain: input_boolean
variables:
  test_text: !input test_text
trigger:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: !input test_trigger_entity
    to:
binary_sensor:
  state: >
    {% if trigger.platform == 'state' and test_text in 'this is a test' %}
      on
    {% else %}
      off
    {% endif %}
  attributes:
    testText: >
      {{ test_text }}

Here is my template binary_sensor using that template:

 - use_blueprint:
      path: sirmeili/text_input_tester.yaml # relative to config/blueprints/template/
      input:
        test_text: test
        test_trigger_entity: input_boolean.epic_tv_exception
    name: Text Input Tester
    unique_id: a36ab10b-4b7f-43b4-ad10-3257af47c6b9

When I execute the “input_boolean” I get the following error in the logs:

Error rendering state template for binary_sensor.text_input_tester: TypeError: ‘in ’ requires string as left operand, not LoggingUndefined

I thought the selector: text: was for text input and in the configuration I’m sending in Text, is this not correct?

I did try changing

  input:
    test_text:
      name: Test Text
      description: The text to text with.
      selector:
        text:

to just this:

  input:
    test_text:
      name: Test Text
      description: The text to text with.
      default: ''

Am I not comparing the text correctly in the template it self? if I change test_text with “test” it works just fine.

2

So just for some more tests, I changed my blueprint to use just “strings” set as variables like this:

binary_sensor:
  state: >
    {% set myText = "test" %}
    {% set textToTest = "this is a test" %}
    {% if trigger.platform == 'state' and myText in textToTest %}
      on
    {% else %}
      off
    {% endif %}

So my guess is that my text input is not being made available to the templating system. Could that be? What would be the point then?

3

I think this is disappointing. I went and found the code that I think is responsible for parsing the variables for use in a template and it appears, at least from my understanding, that for template blueprints, all variables are assumed to be entities.

    @callback
    def _render_variables(self) -> dict:
        if isinstance(self._run_variables, dict):
            return self._run_variables

        return self._run_variables.async_render(
            self.hass,
            {
                "this": TemplateStateFromEntityId(self.hass, self.entity_id),
            },
        )

This is really disappointing. I guess I’ll go add a feature request to see if this can be added, but for now it completely puts a halt on my blueprint as without the ability to change a text (for filtering calendar entries) it makes it useless.

4

Template entity blueprints are still basically in beta, but text inputs do work… they are not assumed to be entities. However, template blueprints don’t support triggers yet, so that is a significant impediment for your trigger-based template binary sensor blueprint.

There is currently work being done by Petro to overhaul the template integration. As I understand it,
there are only a few core devs with the knowledge of and/or comfort with the integration to review and approve changes, so progress is likely to be slow.

5

Ok, but I set one up and in my example above, the trigger does trigger it, even based off an input entity, or am I misunderstanding what you are saying.

6

Yes, what I am saying is that trigger-based sensors and binary sensors are not currently supported… so you are going to get weird errors and non-functioning sensors whenever you try to use a blueprint to create any trigger-based template entity.

7

Gotcha. Ok. well that sucks because I was using this to make 3 of the same “binary” sensors and while I have those sensors working without the blueprint, it is really messy in my config file and I wanted to use the blueprint to make my config easier and of course share it.

Thanks for the info. I’ll stop pulling out my hair now :slight_smile: