WTH do these commonly used integrations not support unique_id

Archive Month of "What the heck?!" 2022
1

PIggybacking off of the discussion of unique_ids versus entity_ids, I thought I would start to compile a list of the YAML-configured integrations I am using that do not support the unique_id property:

Please feel free to suggest others in the comments!

2

it does support it.

3

RESTful Sensor supports it. However, I often use RESTful in order to create multiple sensors using the same endpoint, and at least according to the docs, that variant does not support it.

4

that variant does, it links to restful sensors because the keys are shared.

The main rest integration doesn’t because it’s not creating individual sensors. The uinque_id needs to be on the sensor itself, not the header section.

rest:
  ...
  < NOT HERE, THIS IS HEADER, UNIQUE_ID WOULD BE USELESS HERE AS THIS DEFINES THE ENDPOINT NOT THE SENSORS >
  ...
  sensor:
  - name: xxx
    unique_id: xxx
5

To extend the question:
Why is the unique id optional and not the main identifier for all entities?

6

Because that is what it is. Someone has to build or contribute such features (it doesn’t magically happen out of nothing :smiley: )

For Trend & Workday, they will probably show up in the UI in the near future (I’ve seen PRs for them already), meaning those would gain those capabilities at that point.

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7

Hmmm, thanks for the clarification. I was almost positive that I had tried adding a unique_id to the individual sensors when I set up one of my first REST endpoints a few months ago, but I’ll try it again and report back.

8

it doesn’t look like it’s available for binary_sensor, so that might have been your problem.

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9

Interesting. It’s working with both sensor and binary_sensor entities configured under the rest platform. I’ll remove RESTful from my list!

10

well, the docs for binary_sensor don’t list it when they should

11

Yeah, I was just going to mention that. The code for binary_sensor.rest appears to support unique_id, and I set up a standalone RESTful binary sensor and confirmed that it is working.

I have submitted a PR for the docs:

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12

I made a PR for tod here Unique id and cleanup in tod integration by gjohansson-ST · Pull Request #79412 · home-assistant/core · GitHub

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13

add generic_hygrostat, doesn’t support unique_id

14

min_max didn’t have it when using yaml but made a PR for it now Unique id and improved typing in min_max by gjohansson-ST · Pull Request #79496 · home-assistant/core · GitHub

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15

Environment Canada and QNAP for me, maybe not the most common, but it is very funny to see humidex and hard drive temperatures on an uncategorized sensor card

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16

I don’t believe Alert supports unique_id either.

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