WTH Can't I prepare data for state and attributes in one place

bjornbak · October 31, 2022, 5:28am

I am setting up a set of template sensors to do the calculation of hourly power prices including danish fees on top of the nordpool exchange prices fetched using https://github.com/MTrab/energidataservice:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/bjornbak/6454cfa2285bc07ed6ec49e7b680bcfe

gistfile1.txt

template:
  sensor:
    - unique_id: energy_buy_prices_dkk_kwh
      name: "Energy Buy Prices DKK/kWh"
      device_class: energy
      unit_of_measurement: DKK/kWh
      state: OK
      attributes:
        prices: >
          {% set raw_prices=( state_attr('sensor.energi_data_service_raw', 'raw_today' ) + (state_attr('sensor.energi_data_service_raw', 'raw_tomorrow' ) if state_attr('sensor.energi_data_service_raw', 'tomorrow_valid' ) else []) ) %}

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I would love that my primary sensor energy_buy_prices_dkk_kwh would carry the current price as state but state is rendered before attributes and it a single value.
Furthermore I tried to set up attributes of sorted prices and average but learned there is no guarantee of the order the attributes are rendered.

The runtime costly and maintenance nightmare workaround is to split it in multiple sensors or re-render the prices for state and each attributes.
WTH can’t I render variables to be used for both state and all attributes in one go in one place (per sensor)? I should be able to reference pre-rendered {% set variable = ... %} from state and attributes templates or allow attribute templates to reference the set variables in the state template.

petro · October 31, 2022, 1:05pm

There’s already a WTH for variables on template sensors.