[Reactor] Variables not updating correctly in latest-25201-2aa18550

[therealdb]

I'm re-writing my shelly_scenecontroller mqtt template because I added a new pushbutton and I had strange results. Basically, in the last couple of days, it fired itself, because of the way the logic works. Everytime I'm pushing a button, an "S" is sent as the event, so the button.state never changes. I'm looking for button.since to determine if the button is pressed again.
That's good, but everytime a poll is done, the button.since attribute is updated, because it is tied to time().

reactor-mqtt-contrib/shelly_gen1.yaml at 8bf5022f6b8ee80feed3d881befc119a1f58fcdc · dbochicchio/reactor-mqtt-contrib

Contrib MQTT templates for Reactor. Contribute to dbochicchio/reactor-mqtt-contrib development by creating an account on GitHub.

So, I introduced the use of event_cnt from the payload, comparing the value to the stored one, in order to understand if it has been pushed again, or, in general, the number of times the button is pushed.
Updated template:

    events:
      "shellies/%topic%/input_event/%channel%":
        - attribute: "value_sensor.value"
          json_payload: true
          expr: "float(payload?.event_cnt)"
        - attribute: "button.since"
          json_payload: true
          expr: >
            entity.attributes?.button?.since == null || 
            float(payload?.event_cnt) != entity.attributes?.value_sensor?.value
              ? time() : entity.attributes.button.since
        - attribute: "scene_activation.since" # just copy button.since
          expr: "entity?.attributes?.button?.since"
        - attribute: "button.state"
          json_payload: true
          expr: >
            payload?.event == "S" ? "single" :
            payload?.event == "SS" ? "double" :
            payload?.event == "SSS" ? "triple" :
            payload?.event == "L" ? "long" :
            "unknown"
        - attribute: "scene_activation.scene_id"
          json_payload: true
          expr: "payload?.event"
        - attribute: "x_mqtt_device.online"
          expr: true

This should work, but instead I have this value:

and that's beyond strange and I can't honestly figure it out. @toggledbits any hint is appreciated. Thanks.

[toggledbits]

Debug level 5 for MQTTController and log files are your friend.

That said, I'm suspicious of the operator precedence effect on your expression. Wrap a set of parens around the conditional of the ternary operator and try it again.

[therealdb]

No joy from the logs. I added parens but no joy. The only thing that worked was a delete of the entity/restart of Reactor.

[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.414Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:599> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 associated with Array(1)[ "shelly_gatebutton" ]
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.414Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:601> MQTTController#mqtt dispatching shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 to shelly_gatebutton
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.414Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1152> MQTTController#mqtt handling shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 (event shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0) for shelly_gatebutton: {"event":"","event_cnt":2}
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.415Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1168> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 affects entity shelly_gatebutton attributes value_sensor.value, button.since, scene_activation.since, button.state, scene_activation.scene_id, x_mqtt_device.online
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.415Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1274> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 setting shelly_gatebutton value_sensor.value=2
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.415Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1274> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 setting shelly_gatebutton button.since={"event":"","event_cnt":0}
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.416Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1274> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 setting shelly_gatebutton scene_activation.since={"event":"","event_cnt":0}
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.416Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1274> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 setting shelly_gatebutton button.state=unknown
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.416Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1274> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 setting shelly_gatebutton scene_activation.scene_id=
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.417Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1274> MQTTController#mqtt topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 setting shelly_gatebutton x_mqtt_device.online=true
[latest-25272]2025-09-30T14:49:47.417Z <MQTTController:5:MQTTController.js:1905> MQTTController#mqtt _handle_ext_event() shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 matches 0 subscriptions

Maybe it's something that when it's corrupted with json, doesn't work as expected. I'm reporting as an edge case, but it's very hard to reproduce. Thanks anyway. New build for my MQTT-contrib incoming.

[toggledbits]

Looking more deeply at your logic, I don't think it's going to work. Here's where I think you are:

The current value of button.since is {"event":"", "event_cnt":0}. I assume it got set this way from prior effort leading up to this point. Now, based on what you currently have configured...

When the topic shellies/shelly-gatebutton/input_event/0 arrives with event_cnt:2 in the payload, the first thing MQTTController is doing is setting value_sensor.value to 2. You can see that in the log snippet.

The next thing is it attempts to set button.since, but since your expression is set up so that button.since is only changed if if the value of value_sensor.value is different from payload.event_cnt, which it won't be, because it just set them to the same value. So the expression simply returns the current value of button.since and thus changes nothing.

See the problem now?

You have control over the order in which the attributes are processed for the topic/event.

[therealdb]

@toggledbits said in Strange behavior for MQTT templates using payload and attributes:

See the problem now?

You have control over the order in which the attributes are processed for the topic/event.

I see it! Thanks! (Never code in a hurry while doing 100 other things).

[toggledbits]

@therealdb said in Strange behavior for MQTT templates using payload and attributes:

Never code in a hurry while doing 100 other things

Ummm... is there any other way?