YAML vs UI managed integrations

In the beginning all the setup was done via the YAML files but now things are moving towards using the integrations in the UI, which from user friendliness point of view makes a lot of sense. Also, writing YAML by hand can be (is) a pain.

However, for those of us who are generating the YAML from other sources in order to have a single canonical source of truth as well not needing to back up the HA instance, this move to UI integrations is quite concerning.

As I already have a list of all devices, I am very much not interesting in having to manually add them back again into the UI if at all possible to simply generate the YAML instead.

What exactly are the plans for configuration via YAML (or any other format really - it doesn’t matter) and using the UI to define the integrations? Will YAML continue? Is there a way to generate the required configuration for UI integrations without using the UI?

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Yaml isnt going away, Balloob as mentioned this on numerous occasions.

As above. Also yaml integration takes precedence over ui, so if you have an integration defined in yaml, ha will ignore discovery for that specific integration. Listen to the hass podcast for 0.94 where this is discussed

Thanks for the pointers - wasn’t aware of that (hence the question). Still, 2 questions:

  1. This “We won’t deprecate YAML, it’s here to stay. All recent additions can still be achieved with YAML” can be read as: “Everything you can currently do in YAML, will stay supported but future integrations/features may not support it” - or am I reading too much into it?

  2. Can somebody point me to the documentation on how to configure a gpslogger webhook through yaml (an others for that matter)?

Re 1 - that’s correct. In fact there was a discussion in the architecture repo where someone suggested a ‘rule’ for new integrations that they must be manageable by yaml as well as UI and it was shot down by the supreme leader, so whilst it has always been ‘promised’ that configuration will stay yaml based I think your concerns are valid and I would be prepared for the day where the promise is broken.

I think that GPS logger might be a case where you have to remove the config from yaml and use the integration. Just going off some of the chatter in discord about it.

Apparently that’s today…

Yeah, that’s not great.

Looks like “areas” are also unavailable via YAML. I need to look at generating a script for hass-cli that can be run on start-up to configure everything that cannot be configured via yaml.

This is not a good development…

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Areas only apply to integrations so yeah…

Areas only apply to integrations so yeah…

It is just a group of devices, so there is no reason areas shouldn’t just work from outside the UI.

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