WTH Code templates for ESPHome (code you reuse on many/all your ESP projects)

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

Over time I developed some standard on how to program my ESP boards. I like to reuse the same code and dislike having to edit each device individually when I find a better way to do something.

One way to address this is to have a file with the common code and to include it in the YAML specific to the device.

In the example below, the code I use for the S21 outlet is common to all of them, except for calibrations, names, and other settings. I have all those as substitutions in the device specific file so I don’t have to create custom variants of the main template when I need to change something.

substitutions:
  devicename: s31-outlet-6
  devicename_no_dashes: s31_outlet_6
  friendly_devicename: "Spare Outlet"
  device_description: "Spare Outlet"
  voltage_cal: "0.0"
  restore_mode_setting: RESTORE_DEFAULT_ON
  #restore_mode: Control how the relay attempts to restore state on bootup.
  #RESTORE_DEFAULT_OFF          - Attempt to restore state and default to OFF if not possible to restore.
  #RESTORE_DEFAULT_ON           - Attempt to restore state and default to ON.
  #RESTORE_INVERTED_DEFAULT_OFF - Attempt to restore state inverted from the previous state and default to OFF.
  #RESTORE_INVERTED_DEFAULT_ON  - Attempt to restore state inverted from the previous state and default to ON.
  #ALWAYS_OFF                   - Always initialize the pin as OFF on bootup.
  #ALWAYS_ON                    - Always initialize the pin as ON on bootup.
  # Interval of how often the wifi info is updated
  update_interval_wifi: "60s"


# Basic Config
esphome:
  name: ${devicename}
  comment: ${device_description}
  platform: ESP8266
  board: esp01_1m

<<: !include s31-outlet-template.yaml

What I’d like to see is something like a code snippet library where I save the WIFI section of the code and just need to pick it from a list to add it to the device YAML. While this can be done manually, it would be easier and helpful as the library grows to have a list, and ESPHome do the inclusion (ie.: <<: !include wifi-settings.yaml)

2

I think you are looking for esphome packages :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

@Mynasru I guess that gets close to it, but you need to remember what is in there. If that already exists what would be nice to have is a way to browse the templates and see what they contain. One way is to place them in the main folder, as I did with mine, but it is not ideal.

Thank you for providing a link to packages! I guess that is the functionality I was using but I had not thought about using it for smaller snippets (mine has the entire firmware except the configuration variables).

4

totally agree, now the device is shown as offline, while actually this is just my base.
if you use a subfolder, you can browse it with vscode. but for instance not use secrets anymore.

So actually this can use some improvements.

1 Like
5

Found one way to help with hiding templates from view:

Tip
To hide these base files from the dashboard, you can

Place them in a subdirectory (dashboard only shows files in top-level directory)

Prepend a dot to the filename, like .base.yaml
1 Like