All this trouble that you’re going through… you should just use lovelace_gen and be done with it.
1 Like
Started googling about it, thank you!
I use lovelace gen to create my entire interface. No reused code.
Roughly 4000 lines of code that generates up to 300K lovelace lines.
Let me explain you my original need:
- There is a decluttering template TEMPLATE_1 with some card, let it be “Entities card” for example.
- The card contains a list of entities - let it be ONE entity:
entities:
- entity: sensor.XXXXXXXX
name: ...
.....
- Now I want to create one more template TEMPLATE_2 - which contains TWO entities:
entities:
- entity: sensor.XXXXXXXX
name: ...
.....
- entity: sensor.YYYYYYYY
name: ...
.....
- It is what I wanted to do:
template_1:
card:
type: entities
entities: &entities_list
- entity: XXXX
...
template_2:
card:
type: entities
entities:
- <<: *entities_list
- entity: YYYY
...
And now I realized that it is not possible…
You can do this with lovelace_gen and Jinja
BTW - please, look at this:
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- type: entities
entities: &ref_0
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
- type: entities
entities: *ref_0
- type: entities
entities:
- <<: *ref_0
- sun.sun
It works:
I just added
"entity: " word.
this works because it’s a dictionary and the <<: is merging the dictionary into the single listed item. It wouldn’t work if you were to add more listed items into ref_0
Yes, there is something not working here:
added one more entity to the 1st list:
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- type: entities
entities: &ref_0
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-1
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-2
- type: entities
entities: *ref_0
- type: entities
entities:
- <<: *ref_0
- entity: sun.sun
name: Sun-1
Yah, I’m telling you… there’s no way to merge lists with anchors. Only dictionaries.
list:
mystuff:
- item1
- item2
dictionary:
mystuff:
item1: a
item2: b
item3: c
list of dictionaries
mystuff:
- item1: a
item2: b
item3: c
- item1: a
item2: b
item3: c
You can only merge with dictionary. Not list or list of dictionaries.
So far I am not getting…
- This works:
list of dicts (2 dicts in the list) copied into another list of dicts:
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- type: entities
entities: &ref_0
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-1
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-2
- type: entities
entities: *ref_0
- This works:
list of dicts (1 dict in the list) merged with another list of dicts:
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- type: entities
entities: &ref_0
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-1
- type: entities
entities:
- <<: *ref_0
- entity: sun.sun
name: Sun-1
- This does not work:
list of dicts (2 dicts in the list) merged with another list of dicts - and only the 1st dict is merged:
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- type: entities
entities: &ref_0
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-1
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-2
- type: entities
entities:
- <<: *ref_0
- entity: sun.sun
name: Sun-1
Yaml naturally takes a single item list and treats it like the list doesn’t exist. So you’re actually just dealing with a single dictionary when you create &ref_0
You should check out the yaml anchor rules. There’s plenty of them.
I thought that when this dict:
- entity: aaa
name: bbb
is merged with this dict:
- entity: ccc
name: ddd
it must be:
- entity: aaa
name: bbb
entity: ccc
name: ddd
and must cause an error, but instead it creates this:
- entity: aaa
name: bbb
- entity: ccc
name: ddd
ad it works…
Could you give me a good doc for this?
So far I only read these:
http://thomasloven.com/blog/2018/08/YAML-For-Nonprogrammers/
http://blogs.perl.org/users/tinita/2019/05/reusing-data-with-yaml-anchors-aliases-and-merge-keys.html
There really isn’t a good single resource, just google yaml anchors and click through links.
But be warned, you need a firm understanding of yaml
To clarify further with your example. Your configuration is this:
entities: &entities
- entity: aaa
name: bbb
So yaml only sees this in the anchor *entities:
entity: aaa
name: bbb
if you were to merge them the way they are supposed to be merged, it would look like this:
entities:
- <<: *entities
entity: ccc
name: ddd
which WILL produce errors because this is not valid:
- entity: aaa
name: bbb
entity: ccc
name: ddd
But you are not doing that, you’re providing this as your configuration (which is valid)
entities:
- <<: *entities
- entity: ccc
name: ddd
Petro, thank you very much for explanations!
I found a way to add a new entity to the list (my original task):
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- &my_card
type: entities
title: Some title
state_color: true
entities: &ref_1
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-1
style: |
ha-card {
background: green;
}
- <<: *my_card
entities: &ref_2
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-2
- <<: *ref_1
- <<: *my_card
entities: &ref_3
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-3
- <<: *ref_2
- <<: *ref_1
- <<: *my_card
entities: &ref_4
- entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-4
- <<: *ref_3
- <<: *ref_2
- <<: *ref_1
Each new card inherits the card’s properties (like title, style) & entities.
But every new entity must be added to the top of the list - that is why the order is reverse (4,3,2,1).
I think this is more elegant:
type: vertical-stack
cards:
- &my_card
type: entities
title: Some title
state_color: true
entities:
- &ref_1
entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-1
style: |
ha-card {
background: green;
}
- <<: *my_card
entities:
- *ref_1
- &ref_2
entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-2
- <<: *my_card
entities:
- *ref_1
- *ref_2
- &ref_3
entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-3
- <<: *my_card
entities:
- *ref_1
- *ref_2
- *ref_3
- &ref_4
entity: binary_sensor.updater
name: Updater-4