What to use for simple scripting?

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1

I am using Home Assistant for years and it became de facto my state machine for everything in home automation but also in my own development around my self-hosted world.

Over the years I moved more and more activities to the native HA solutions (for instance automation: I started with the HA YAML, moved to App Daemeon, moved to my own docker with automations, moved to pyscript and then finally came back to the native automations - a several years journey).

I now face the question of launching some simple scripts (calling an API, checking on the reply, polling for state - and the script ends after having set some states). My first goto solution is to use pyscript but I was wondering if in the “new” (= say, a year or two) HA there wouldn’t be a better (simpler/more native) solution?

This is a general “call for ideas” - I will manage on my own, just did not want to miss something.

TL;DR: what would you use to run simple scripts such as “action an IoT and set a state upon the reply”

Note: I specifically do not want to use MQTT for this script, for a bunch of reasons

2

what do you mean 'set a state on reply'? Setting states isn’t really a thing in HA unless you use these ‘other’ automation engines. Typically, if you’re setting a state, you should be using template sensors.

with built in HA, you can make a script return a value. You can use that in the action field on a trigger based template sensor.

3

Sorry for not having been more clear. To set the context, this is an example of the action I had in mind (for instance opening a sliding door that opens slowly):

  • call an API
  • set a state “calling”
  • wait for a reply
  • analyze the reply
    • depending on the reply set the state to “failed” or “started”
  • call the API to get the status of the opening (in a loop)
    • set the state to “opening” or “open”
  • when the state is “open” we are done

This could be triggered in an automation (a physical button was pressed, a helper button was pressed, the sun is up, …)

The simple case of “call and API and that’s all” can be done though rest_command but the more complicated polling probably not.

It would not be difficult to do in pyscript, I was just considering something more native.

4

Combination of Script and rest_command should do it? Might be better organised as more than one discrete script (e.g. the polling loop, if there’s no better way to get the state back).

Use an input_text or more elegantly, an input_select for your entity.