RESTful Sensor
The rest
sensor platform is consuming a given endpoint which is exposed by a RESTful API of a device, an application, or a web service. The sensor has support for GET and POST requests.
To enable this sensor, add the following lines to your configuration.yaml
file for a GET request:
# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://IP_ADDRESS/ENDPOINT
or for a POST request:
# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://IP_ADDRESS/ENDPOINT
method: POST
payload: '{ "device" : "heater" }'
or a template based request:
# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource_template: http://IP_ADDRESS/{{ now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}
Configuration Variables
- resource
(string)(Required)
The resource or endpoint that contains the value.
- resource_template
(template)(Required)
The resource or endpoint that contains the value with template support.
- method
-
(string)(Optional)
The method of the request. Either
POST
orGET
.Default value:
GET
- name
-
(string)(Optional)
Name of the REST sensor.
Default value:
REST Sensor
- device_class
(string)(Optional)
Sets the class of the device, changing the device state and icon that is displayed on the frontend.
- value_template
(template)(Optional)
Defines a template to extract the value.
- payload
(string)(Optional)
The payload to send with a POST request. Depends on the service, but usually formed as JSON.
- verify_ssl
-
(boolean)(Optional)
Verify the SSL certificate of the endpoint.
Default value:
true
- timeout
-
(integer)(Optional)
Defines max time to wait data from the endpoint.
Default value:
10
- unit_of_measurement
(string)(Optional)
Defines the units of measurement of the sensor, if any.
- authentication
(string)(Optional)
Type of the HTTP authentication.
basic
ordigest
.- username
(string)(Optional)
The username for accessing the REST endpoint.
- password
(string)(Optional)
The password for accessing the REST endpoint.
- headers
(string | list)(Optional)
The headers for the requests.
- json_attributes
(string | list)
A list of keys to extract values from a JSON dictionary result and then set as sensor attributes.
- force_update
-
(boolean)
Sends update events even if the value hasn’t changed. Useful if you want to have meaningful value graphs in history.
Default value:
false
Use either resource
or resource_template
.
curl
can help you identify the variable you want to display in your Home Assistant frontend. The example below shows the JSON response of a device that is running with aREST.
$ curl -X GET http://192.168.1.31/temperature/
{"temperature": 77, "id": "sensor02", "name": "livingroom", "connected": true}
The response is expected to be a dictionary or a list with a dictionary as its 0th element.
Examples
In this section you find some real-life examples of how to use this sensor.
External IP address
You can find your external IP address using the service JSON Test at their http://ip.jsontest.com/ URL.
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://ip.jsontest.com
name: External IP
value_template: '{{ value_json.ip }}'
Single value from a local Glances instance
The glances sensor is doing the exact same thing for all exposed values.
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://IP_ADRRESS:61208/api/2/mem/used
name: Used mem
value_template: '{{ value_json.used| multiply(0.000000954) | round(0) }}'
unit_of_measurement: MB
Value from another Home Assistant instance
The Home Assistant API exposes the data from your attached sensors. If you are running multiple Home Assistant instances which are not connected you can still get information from them.
If the Home Assistant instance in the resource variable is protected by an API password, you can append ?api_password=YOUR_PASSWORD
to the resource URL to authenticate or use headers:
.
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://IP_ADDRESS:8123/api/states/sensor.weather_temperature
name: Temperature
value_template: '{{ value_json.state }}'
unit_of_measurement: "°C"
Accessing an HTTP authentication protected endpoint
The REST sensor supports HTTP authentication and customized headers.
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://IP_ADDRESS:5000/sensor
username: ha1
password: test1
authentication: basic
headers:
User-Agent: Home Assistant
Content-Type: application/json
The headers will contain all relevant details. This will also give you the ability to access endpoints that are protected by tokens.
Content-Length: 1024
Host: IP_ADDRESS1:5000
Authorization: Basic aGExOnRlc3Qx
Accept-Encoding: identity
Content-Type: application/json
User-Agent: Home Assistant
If you are accessing a resource protected by a Bearer
token in an Authorization
header, you can either put the token in the header field of the sensor configuration (not recommended) or store the token in your secrets.yaml
file. In that case, be sure to include the word Bearer
in the secrets
file.
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: http://IP_ADDRESS:5000/sensor
headers:
Authorization: !secret my_sensor_secret_token
Example entry for the secrets.yaml
file:
my_sensor_secret_token: Bearer gh_DHQIXKVf6Pr4H8Yqz8uhApk_mnV6Zje6Pr4H8Yqz8A8nCxz6SBghQdS51
Use GitHub to get the latest release of Home Assistant
This sample is very similar to the updater
integration but the information is received from GitHub.
sensor:
- platform: rest
resource: https://api.github.com/repos/home-assistant/home-assistant/releases/latest
username: YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME
password: YOUR_GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN
authentication: basic
value_template: '{{ value_json.tag_name }}'
headers:
Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json
Content-Type: application/json
User-Agent: Home Assistant REST sensor
Fetch multiple JSON values and present them as attributes
JSON Test returns the current time, date and milliseconds since epoch from http://date.jsontest.com/.
sensor:
- platform: rest
name: JSON time
json_attributes:
- date
- milliseconds_since_epoch
resource: http://date.jsontest.com/
value_template: '{{ value_json.time }}'
- platform: template
sensors:
date:
friendly_name: 'Date'
value_template: '{{ states.sensor.json_time.attributes["date"] }}'
milliseconds:
friendly_name: 'milliseconds'
value_template: '{{ states.sensor.json_time.attributes["milliseconds_since_epoch"] }}'
This sample fetches a weather report from OpenWeatherMap, maps the resulting data into attributes of the RESTful sensor and then creates a set of template sensors that monitor the attributes and present the values in a usable form.
sensor:
- platform: rest
name: OWM_report
json_attributes:
- main
- weather
value_template: '{{ value_json["weather"][0]["description"].title() }}'
resource: https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?zip=80302,us&APPID=VERYSECRETAPIKEY
- platform: template
sensors:
owm_weather:
value_template: '{{ state_attr('sensor.owm_report', 'weather')[0]["description"].title() }}'
entity_picture_template: '{{ "https://openweathermap.org/img/w/"+state_attr('sensor.owm_report', 'weather')[0]["icon"].lower()+".png" }}'
entity_id: sensor.owm_report
owm_temp:
friendly_name: 'Outside temp'
value_template: '{{ state_attr('sensor.owm_report', 'main')["temp"]-273.15 }}'
unit_of_measurement: "°C"
entity_id: sensor.owm_report
owm_pressure:
friendly_name: 'Outside pressure'
value_template: '{{ state_attr('sensor.owm_report', 'main')["pressure"] }}'
unit_of_measurement: "hP"
entity_id: sensor.owm_report
owm_humidity:
friendly_name: 'Outside humidity'
value_template: '{{ state_attr('sensor.owm_report', 'main')["humidity"] }}'
unit_of_measurement: "%"
entity_id: sensor.owm_report
This config shows how to extract multiple values from a dictionary with json_attributes
and template
. It helps you to avoid flooding the REST service and only ask once the results and separate them in multiple templates referring to it. (No need for a specific state on the REST sensor and it’s default state will be the full JSON value which will be longer than the 255 max length. It’s why we’ll used a static value)
{
"bedroom1": {
"temperature": 15.79,
"humidity": 55.78,
"battery": 5.26,
"timestamp": "2019-02-27T22:21:37Z"
},
"bedroom2": {
"temperature": 18.99,
"humidity": 49.81,
"battery": 5.08,
"timestamp": "2019-02-27T22:23:44Z"
},
"bedroom3": {
"temperature": 18.58,
"humidity": 47.95,
"battery": 5.15,
"timestamp": "2019-02-27T22:21:22Z"
}
}
sensor:
- platform: rest
name: room_sensors
resource: http://<address_to_rest_service>
json_attributes:
- bedroom1
- bedroom2
- bedroom3
value_template: 'OK'
- platform: template
sensors:
bedroom1_temperature:
value_template: '{{ states.sensor.room_sensors.attributes["bedroom1"]["temperature"] }}'
device_class: temperature
unit_of_measurement: '°C'
bedroom1_humidity:
value_template: '{{ states.sensor.room_sensors.attributes["bedroom1"]["humidity"] }}'
device_class: humidity
unit_of_measurement: '%'
bedroom1_battery:
value_template: '{{ states.sensor.room_sensors.attributes["bedroom1"]["battery"] }}'
device_class: battery
unit_of_measurement: 'V'
bedroom2_temperature:
value_template: '{{ states.sensor.room_sensors.attributes["bedroom2"]["temperature"] }}'
device_class: temperature
unit_of_measurement: '°C'