Using JSON instead of YAML for configuration

Configuration
1

I am pretty new to hass, but I am already fed up with the YAML configuration :grinning:.

Thanks to node.js, I found a way to use JSON instead on my ubuntu based server.

  1. Install node.js:
    sudo apt install nodejs
  2. Install the package yamljs:
    sudo npm install -g yamljs
  3. Convert your existing configuration.yaml:
    yaml2json .homeassistant/configuration.yaml -p > .homeassistant/configuration.json
  4. Edit .homeassistant/configuration.json as you like
  5. Convert it back to yaml
    json2yaml .homeassistant/configuration.json > .homeassistant/configuration.yaml
  6. Restart hass

In addition, I you have hass running as a service, you can automate step 5 by adding this line to etc/systemd/system/home-assistant@[user].service:
ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/json2yaml ~/.homeassistant/configuration.json > ~/.homeassistant/configuration.yaml"

Whenever you restart with sudo systemctl restart home-assistant@[user], the existing yaml will be overwritten with the converted json before starting hass

2

Couldn’t you just use PyYaml instead of installing node?

3

Or use appdaemon instead of writing automations in yaml.