WTH can't I construct templates using a UI like calculator with buttons?

I’m a long time home assistant user, but what I’m still struggling with a lot is templates and try to avoid them as much as possible, while I know how usatile they are.

So I would love an UI to configure a template to use in automations or as a sensor.

E.g.:

  • choose entity, see all their attributes and choose one
  • add mathematical operators (substract one from another value, compare one to another)
  • choose from possible values (like, use current or previous state)
  • if possible: look into the value, the sensor had a given time range ago, let me set this time range via the UI
  • and so on

I know, that there are so many options with templates, which makes building a UI hard, but for me, even simple ones, would be a huge help!


I think they mean programmatically construct the actual Jinja template code using the UI.

Like, select an entity via UI, then the UI changes modals to one that shows all entity attributes, select one. Then the UI moves to a modal to do operations like arithmetic or pipe it to float or int or something.

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Yep, that’s why I altered the title a few hours ago.

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Ah, hadn’t seen that, just clicked the title and read away.

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haha… got it.
jinja2 UI builder… fantastic :slight_smile:

@capstan1 Hear, hear! :wink:

Thanks! Great suggestion!