Currently it’s still not possible to include files into the raw-editor of a GUI controlled dashboard.
This feature will allow the less yaml-oriented users to build better dashboards (e.g. with help of HACS-integrations) without building their full dashboard in YAML.
Oh I would love this! The raw editor gets so cluttered with all templates etc. To be able to put them as YAML files in a folder structure would be awesome!
The reason for this is that the data for a GUI controlled dashboard is not actually stored as YAML, but in a format which is more useable for automatic processing. Unfortunately, this format doesn’t have any concept of more advanced YAML functionality like !functions.
Simply put.
Okay as I understand the GUI dashboard is directly stored as JSON in .storage although it’s written in YAML within the raw-editor.
This caught me thinking of a possibility to let an integration use a Phyton-script to append the dashboards JSON-file for instance with button_card_templates converted from YAML to JSON.
But this can be very cumbersome and not advised to let third-party integrations change files in .storage folder
With the responses this feature request has been getting (78 votes to date), I’m sure any solution or workaround would be greatly appreciated.
I know I’d love to avoid having to choose between lovelace just in yaml mode, or editing the 100s and 100s of lines of yaml for the ha-floorplan in the UI editor, but instead !include a file that can be edited on my computer, via the samba share add-on.
I too would love to see support for included yaml files in the UI. Perhaps a new “yaml” card type that would just convert the yaml to json, like I assume the raw code editor does. I also have several views which share some of the same cards, so if they could both point to a shated yaml file for a speciific card, then changes to that card only need to be made in one location. And since only a few cards are complex enough to require direct yaml config, I’d rather not have to convert the entire dashboard to yaml. THANKS!
As I can see this, the solution with be that you “Resources” are modified and new type “Include” would be added. This is then parsed when creating YAML, like everything else.
Or the other option would be that this support is added in configuration.yaml “frondend” (like themes).
It would be great to organise all templates and remove the clutter from the raw editor by using YAML files in a folder structure.
JSON5 allows comments in JSON. So if JSON5 is an option the often requested feature “comments in UI editor” will be possible. And this way include statements could be added as comment and parsed.
I’d love to be able to comment in your great lovelace cards very often. And includes or reusable lovelace parts would be great, too.
Do you think JSON5 could be used to add these features.