auto-entities

Kinda-sorta-experimental-ish

This plugin can automatically populate the entities: list of a card or entity-row with entities matching a filter.

If you've been around the custom lovelace stuff scene for a while, this function probably feels familliar to you. This plugin is a reimplementation of the fantastic monster-card by Marius Ciotlos. Differences are outlined below.

Installation instructions

This plugin requires card-tools to be installed.

For installation instructions see this guide.

Options

Name	Type	Default	Description
type	string	Required	custom:auto-entities
card	object	Required	The card to display
filter	object	None	Filters for including and excluding entities
entities	list	None	Enties to include
show_empty	boolean	true	Show/hide empty card

filters

The filter options has two sections, include and exclude. Each section contains a list of filters.

Each section has the following options. All options are optional, and filters will match any entity matching ALL options.

Name	Description
domain	Match entity domain (e.g. light, binary_sensor, media_player)
state	Match entity state (e.g. "on", "off", 3.14)
entity_id	Match entity id (e.g. light.bed_light, binary_sensor.weekdays_only, media_player.kitchen)
name	Match friendly name attribute (e.g. "Kitchen lights", "Front door")
group	Match entities in given group
attributes	Match attributes. See below
options	Additional options to attach to entities matching this filter (only makes sense in include)

The attributes option takes an object with attribute: value combinations and matches any entity which matches all of those attributes.

How it works

auto-entities creates a list of entities by:

1. Including every entity given in entities: (this allows nesting of auto-entities if you'd want to do that for some reason...)
2. Include all entities that matches ALL options of ANY filter in the filter.include section.
3. Remove all entities that matches ALL options of ANY filter in the filter.exclude section.

It then creates a card based on the configuration given in card: but adds the entities: option populated with the entities from above.

Matching rules

Any filter option can use * as a wildcard for string comparison. Remember to quote your strings when doing this:

filter:
  include:
    - name: "Bedroom *"
    - entity_id: "sensor.temperature_*_max"

Any filter option can use javascript Regular Expressions for string comparison. To do this, enclose the regex in /. Also make sure to quote the string:

filter:
  include:
    - name: "/Bedroom .*/"
    - entity_id: "/sensor.temperature_4[abd]/"

Any filter option dealing with numerical quantities can use comparison operators if specified as a string (must be quoted):

filter:
  include:
    - attributes:
      battery: "<= 50" # Attribute battery_level is 50 or less
    - state: "> 25" # State is greater than 25
    - attributes:
      count: "! 2" # Attribute count is not equal to 2
    - state: "= 12" # State is exactly 12 (also matches "12", "12.0" etc.)
    - state: 12 # State is exactly 12 but not "12"

Any option can be used more than once by appending a number or string to the option name:

filter:
  include:
    - state 1: "> 100"
      state 2: "< 200"

The filter above matches entities where the state is above 100 AND below 200. Compare to the following:

filter:
  include:
    - state: "< 100"
    - state: "> 200"

The two filters above together match entities where the state is below 100 OR above 200.

Advanced stuff: You can drill into attributes that are object using keys or indexes separated by ::

filter:
  include:
    - attributes:
      hs_color: "1:> 30"

The example above matches lights with a hs_color saturation value greater than 30.

Examples

Show all with some exceptions

type: custom:auto-entities
card:
  type: glance
filter:
  include: [{}]
  exclude:
    - entity_id: "*yweather*"
    - domain: group
    - domain: zone

Show all in device_tracker with battery less than 50:

type: custom:auto-entities
card:
  type: entities
  title: Battery warning
filter:
  include:
    - domain: device_tracker
      options:
        secondary_info: last-changed
      attributes:
        battery: "< 50"
        source_type: gps

Show all lights that are on:

type: custom:auto-entities
show_empty: false
card:
  type: glance
  title: Lights on
filter:
  include:
    - domain: light
      state: "on" # Remember that "on" and "off" are magic in yaml, and must always be quoted
      options:
        tap_action:
          action: toggle

Also show all lights that are on:

type: custom:auto-entities
show_empty: false
card:
  type: entities
  title: Lights on
  show_header_toggle: false
filter:
  include:
    - domain: light
  exclude:
  - state: "off"
  - state: "unavailable"

About monster-card

This card works very much like monster-card with the following exceptions:

• auto-entities has no when option. Hiding the card based on the state of an entity is better done with conditional.
• auto-entities supports Regular Expressions.
• auto-entities supports comparison operators for states as well as attributes.
• auto-entities can add all entities from a group
• auto-entities works with custom cards.