Feature Request: methods on entity_ids

[dlashua]

It would be a nice language feature if entity id's could have service calls made against them as though they were real python objects. When this syntax is invoked, it would result in a service_call with the entity_id kwarg set to the entity_id it was called on.

Example Script that works today:

@state_trigger('input_boolean.test_1 == "on"')
def do_it():
  input_boolean.turn_on(entity_id="input_boolean.test_2")

Proposed Possible Syntax:

@state_trigger('input_boolean.test_1 == "on"')
def do_it():
  input_boolean.test_2.turn_on()

This should be enabled for all entity_ids in any domain:

climate.set_preset_mode(entity_id="climate.hvac", preset_mode="home")
climate.hvac.set_preset_mode(preset_mode="home")

input_number.set_value(entity_id="input_number.test", value="13")
input_number.test.set_value(value="13")

input_select.select_option(entity_id="input_select.dishwasher_status", option="clean")
input_select.dishwasher_status.select_option(option="clean")

This makes the code look cleaner and more readable. It also prevents the need to type "input_number" (for instance) twice, and prevents the need to type "entity_id" at all.

An even better extension of this proposal would require a hardcoded list to be kept and maintained in pyscript since I don't believe this information is provided by HASS (though it might be detectable by the parameter information given when HASS enumerates available service calls). Service calls that only require two kwargs -- entity_id and one other thing -- could have the kwarg for that other thing hard coded (or somehow detected). For instance, for input_number.set_value, the other kwarg is value. If pyscript knew this then this syntax would be possible:

input_number.set_value(entity_id="input_number.test", value="13")
input_number.test.set_value(value="13")
input_number.test.set_value("13")

[raman325]

You can get the parameters for a given service from homeassistant.helpers.service.async_get_all_descriptions. It appears that the descriptions are cached by hass so calling this method shouldn't be a terribly expensive operation.

[craigbarratt]

Yes, that's exactly the approach I'm taking. I just call it once at startup and reload to extract the services that have an entity_id parameter and use that to create the "methods".

[craigbarratt]

This is a very clever idea! Thanks for suggesting it.

I just pushed an implementation of this, including autodetecting entity_id arguments as @raman325 suggested, and allowing a single positional argument if there is only one parameter left over.

I still haven't added tests or docs, but give it a try. Autocompletion in Jupyter should work too. Hopefully I'll add tests and docs tomorrow.

The virtual methods take precedence over real attributes. If there is a name collision you could use state.get_attr() (which by the way I probably should have named state.getattr(); maybe I'll change that).

[dlashua]

I've tested this and it's working great!! Thanks!!

[rytilahti]

I didn't realize that this is soo new feature, but works fine here, too! I'm currently taking the first steps to covert my old appdaemon apps, and I incidentally used the syntax not realizing it wouldn't have worked had I done this yesterday. Thanks @craigbarratt for this project, it's awesome! 🥇

[craigbarratt]

@rytilahti - that's quite a coincidence! Glad it works for you too. Appreciate the feedback and feel free to pass along any suggestions or feature requests.