Need help with adding YAML code from a community post to HA config | Home Assistant | Page 1

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 8:18 AM

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I've never ever done any coding in raw yaml in home assistant before. Until now, i've done ALL automations in the GUI. However, i often see people posting yaml codes with "I just created this smart sensor that can do X" or "i use the X thing to do Y" and i feel very limited when i don't know exactly how to just copy it and make it work. Now i found an example of something i would like, that (as far as i know, with my limited knowledge) cannot be done in the GUI: I would like to have a history of the persistent notifications that are created in Home assistant. I found a community post about it, and it seems a guy did it: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/history-of-notifications/196518 first answer from VDRainer. I tried copying his code into my automation.yaml file in the config folder, but it started throwing a lot of errors that i'm not sure how to resolve.

Any help is very appreciated!

Home Assistant Community

History of Notifications

Checking notifications’ history log is useful, to check if you missed some critical notifications. Please make the feature to save notifications history. You could limit no. of notifications or those with “critical status” or unlimited with dependency from the entire HA database recorder history.

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:27 AM

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where are you putting this yaml? in the configuration file? why not just create an automation using the yaml editor in the ui?

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:28 AM

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yeah, im putting it in the automation.yaml file, which is referenced in the configuration.yaml file

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i'm not sure how to (re)create this in the gui

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:29 AM

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it's a much safer way to do it if you aren't comfortable with yaml in general

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That said, I think all you need to do is remove the automation: line and then select all of it and shift+tab it to reduce the indentation level of the remaining text by 1

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the notify stuff has to be set up differently too, it doesn't go in your automations.yaml

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:33 AM

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Wow, i didn't even think of trying a yaml editor in the automation creation!

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Now, i'm trying to make it work in there

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gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:34 AM

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ok yeah, delete the notify stuff for now, and the automation:

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and then select the rest and shift tab

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:35 AM

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Like this

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:35 AM

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yup

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that should save now

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:36 AM

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it says: Message malformed: extra keys not allowed @ data['0']

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:36 AM

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oh do

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you want to delete the "- " before alias

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and then unindent it all one more time

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:37 AM

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That worked

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:37 AM

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like that

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:37 AM

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And then do another for the notify stuff?

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:39 AM

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easier to go into integrations and then pick file

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:40 AM

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And is that it then?

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:40 AM

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sorry - just looking at it now - i haven't done any logging to file ^^

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actually looks like the easiest thing to do is go into your configuration.yaml and copy that notify: block in

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:42 AM

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done

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:42 AM

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if there's already a notify: block, just copy the - platform etc underneath what's already there

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:43 AM

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Can i do a fake persistent notification to test?

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:43 AM

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do you have developer tools active?

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:43 AM

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yes

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:44 AM

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you likely have to reload the configuration in the yaml tab as well for the notify changes to kick in too

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:45 AM

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doesn't seem to be working

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:46 AM

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even after reloading the configuration?

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might need a restart... i don't actually know when the notify reloads

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:47 AM

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wait

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the automation hasnt been saved

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i just did it again and i cant find it in the automations overview

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:49 AM

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weird... you didn't mess around with automations import in the configuration.yaml?

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:49 AM

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no

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 9:50 AM

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i'm gonna poke someone who knows more about the backend than me

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 9:58 AM

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now it's there

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but it's still not working

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This is what i got in the configurations.yaml file

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And this is the automation

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This just came up

jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 10:02 AM

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Did you restart HA after adding the notify to your config it's a new key, so it usually needs a restart.

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 10:02 AM

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no, just did a recheck of configuration

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I will restart it

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The error is still there

jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 10:11 AM

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Go to developer tools > services > and look for the notify service and see what options there are.

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I'm pretty sure you actually need to add that notify service through the UI, I didn't read the YAML before due to it being a screenshot and I wasn't wearing my glasses 😅

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 10:12 AM

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do you mean developer tools > states? If so:

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i already added the notify service via the ui by adding the file integration

jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 10:15 AM

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And did you add wherever the file is to the config as per the integration page?

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 10:16 AM

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yes

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indigo hareBOT Oct 26, 2024, 10:16 AM

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File

Instructions on how to integrate sensors which read from files into Home Assistant.

Documentation

View the documentation

Quality scale

No score

IoT Class

Local Polling

Integration type

integration

Source

View the source on GitHub

Issues

View known issues

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 10:16 AM

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jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 10:17 AM

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Make sure that the file you want to use is added to the allowlist_external_dirs. The file will be created if it doesn’t exist, but make sure the folder exists. Add the path of your configuration folder (for example, /config/file_notifications) to save the file there.

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 10:17 AM

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And here you can see the file opened

jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 10:17 AM

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Good. Then try editing and saving the automation.

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 10:18 AM

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the error is still there

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wait

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i think i know what the problem is

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in the error, it says: The automation "persistent_notification_log" (automation.persistent_notification_log) has an unknown action: notify.custom_log.

Which might be because when i tried with the yaml code i changed the notify line to match the name i gave the notify sensor/entity/whatever it is called

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But now that i made it via the ui, i didn't give it a name, so i think that line needs to be changed again, but idk what to, since i didn't give it a name

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now i've changed the entity ID to notify.pn_log for the file integration. I also changed it in the automation, but it still produces an error. I think it is because the code is missing something, because it doesnt make sense to me that the last line is "action" and the next thing is just a file/integration. Shouldn't it tell more, link open the file, append data or something like that?

jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 10:50 AM

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The action should be to send a notification.

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The notification action for files has changed. You should try configuring it in the UI, you'll end up with something like this:

target:
  entity_id: notify.log_file
data:
  title: Kitchen Light Switch
  message: >-
    Kitchen Light Level {{ states('sensor.kitchen_light_sensor_illuminance_lux')
    }}
action: notify.send_message

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 11:02 AM

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I dont get it sorry. Can you send me a screenshot of how i should configure it in the UI?

jade pawn Oct 26, 2024, 12:01 PM

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Just try doing it 😉
Add an action, look for notify, and go from there.

rocky lake Oct 26, 2024, 12:20 PM

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I really cant get it to work lol

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When i go to traces and the trace timeline, i can see there is a problem: "Error rendering data template: UndefinedError: 'dict object' has no attribute 'event'" and i guess its the {{ trigger.event.data.service_data.title }} {{ trigger.event.data.service_data.message }} lines, but i don't know how to figure out what it should be instead

gray nebula Oct 26, 2024, 12:36 PM

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Did you run the automation manually?

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Because that results in an empty trigger which would result in an error like that

#Need help with adding YAML code from a community post to HA config