Reactor-Editor / Reactor-ui-Status Errors

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24115

• Entities UI: When a capability filter is selected, the value column header displays a selector allowing the user to display a value in the column other than the primary value for the filtered entities.
• The extensions subdirectory ext may now be located under config, which makes its location uniform for bare-metal and docker users; this will eventually become the standard location. It is not necessary at this time to relocate your existing ext directory if you have one — either or both the old and new locations will work for the foreseeable future.
• Improve the coordination of the Reactions and Rules displays when open and interacting on multiple displays (e.g. when you delete a reaction on one screen, it should disappear from the other(s)).
• Fix a browser-side performance issue/delay with reconnection to a restarting Reactor service when the Status page is up and displaying the Recently Changed Entities widget. This also improves the memory consumption and performance of the widget generally.
• Increase tolerance for damage to most storage objects, particularly those that only maintain state that can usually be safely rebuilt on the fly. For those that cannot, like rules and expressions, isolate a faulty file and ignore the object with an alert to the user. Preserve the broken file.
• PR 0000367 Localization of the new strings in the rule state override menu and state display have been added.
• PR 0000368 Fix missing localization string for Copy Attributes button in Entities list entity detail card.
• Report detected time zone and offset in startup messages. Add time zone display to hover title on browser and host times in UI header.
• New wifi_status system capability for WiFi-connected devices that can report connection status.
• PR 0000369 Docs: Add documentation for ev_charger system capability.
• HassController now supports responses from services that support them; whether required or optional, a response will be requested and stored in x_hass.last_response on the target Reactor entity. The data returned is not processed in any way; it is written as-received to the attribute. Tip: if possible, always make the service call from the target entity, not from the system entity.
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.4.4

MQTTController 24114

NOTE: This version requires Reactor build 24115 or higher

• Add template for Shelly RGBW2 (using Gen1 API) called shelly_rgbw2_color (requires topic).
• Add support for wifi_status capability for some devices; more to come. Previously, those devices stored WiFi status info in x_mqtt_device (extended capability) attributes. Now that a first-class capability is being used, the extended attributes are deprecated and will be removed from a future release.
• Templates may now remove an action from an entity if it isn't supported by the device. This is done by specifying the action's value as false. If a device cannot support any action of a capability, the entire default list of actions for the capability can be removed by specifying the capability value as false in the actions section of the template. For an example, see the template shelly_rgbw2_color implementation for capability light_effect action set_speed, and the action implementation for the button capability.
• Templates may now define custom actions in x_mqtt_device. Including an arguments object in the standard action arguments format allows the template to notify the UI of the arguments required by the action. For an example, see the template shelly_rgbw2_color action x_mqtt_device.set_white.

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MQTTController 24120

• Soft reconfiguration of entities on configuration changes and system upgrades. This should preserve attribute values when the entity needs to be configured due to implementation changes for capabilities.

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MQTTController 24142

DEPRECATION NOTICE: The uses_template entity configuration directive is now deprecated; use include instead (see below). It will remain functional until build 25091 (Q2 2025).

• PR 0000370: Events for tasmota_generic_relay in template have hard-coded device ID (left over from test/dev).
• System templates are now broken up to multiple files in a hierarchy within the templates distribution subdirectory.
• New include directive in entity configuration or a template can be used to include the data of another template. You may name a single template (string value), or an array of template names. This permits common behaviors across devices to be modularized in templates. This directive also now replaces uses_template, which is deprecated (see above notice).
• The user custom template directory (config/mqtt_templates/) now supports any directory hierarchy the user wishes to maintain within it. It searches for templates in YAML or JSON files in the hierarchy, and will traverse ZIP files as well (so template developers can distribute their products in ZIP archives for easy installation/upgrade).

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24152

POTENTIAL BREAKING CHANGE: The port on which Reactor provides HTTP(S) service is now determined by the baseurl configuration value first. If no port is given there, the PORT environment variable is then queried; if that's not set, the default port is used (different for HTTP and HTTPS; see below). In previous versions, the PORT environment variable had the highest priority, but this is no longer the case. This will likely have no effect on most users, but if you're having trouble accessing the UI after upgrade, check your baseurl configuration first (if you don't have one or need an example, refer to the distribution version of reactor.yaml in dist-config. For users using Reactor via HTTPS (SSL/TLS encryption), I recommend using port 8554 in baseurl; regular HTTP (no encryption) remains on port 8111.

• User Authentication and Access Control. See the Access Control documentation. This is feature request PR 0000351.
• The default port for HTTPS-enabled Reactor is now 8554 (8111+443). If your system or docker configuration set the PORT environment variable before starting Reactor, whatever port that specifies will be used as before. See the How-To: HTTPS section of the documentation for information about configuring Reactor for HTTPS.
• The port used for HTTP(S) service is now determined by the port specified in baseurl (in config/reactor.yaml) first; if no port is specified in baseurl, the PORT environment variable is used if set, and finally the Reactor default of 8111 (or 8554 if TLS is enabled).
• If HTTPS (HTTP + SSL/TLS) is enabled and its configured port is other than 8111 (the standard HTTP (non-SSL/TLS) port for Reactor), an HTTP service on port 8111 will now be created to redirect requests from HTTP to HTTPS (no unencrypted service is provided other than redirection). This feature can be disabled by configuring redirect_http to false in the reactor section of config/reactor.yaml.
• The allow_ips in the reactor section of config/reactor.yaml now allows CIDR address range specification (e.g. 10/8 or 192.168.0/24) for ranges of addresses.
• Updated the documentation theme and its supporting plugins; improved the appearance of code snippets with syntax highlighting in most cases; add line highlighting in many code snippets to draw attention to certain elements or changes.
• Dashboard: added new Thermostat type (supported by Level.updown layout) for capabilities hvac_heating_unit/hvac_cooling_unit. Evolving; further improvements coming.
• VirtualEntityController: Support for time-series data collection and aggregation. See the docs).
• VirtualEntityController: Preserve attribute values if possible across system updates that affect capability definitions or implementations.
• DynamicGroupController: It is now possible to set the primary attribute of a dynamic group, and determine its value dynamically. Trivial example: add the binary_sensor.state attribute to a group to show true when any light in the group is on. Refer to the docs for DynamicGroupController.
• The dist-config directory is now copied to the user data virtual path target when running in docker containers so that its contents are more easily accessible to docker users (no need to docker exec into the running container).
• Rules: the logging level for most rule evaluation messages has been reduced to DEBUG0 (numeric level 5); rules will now log only startup/shutdown and rule state changes at INFO level. Per-object logging configuration can be used to enable more detailed logging for a specific rule when required.
• Fixed an issue in the core related to deleting certain objects (a Global Reaction was reported, but could have been many object types).
• Fixed an issue with local service of docs that caused a cross-site scripting error on some browsers (this is the "Initializing search..." bug).
• Developer Tools: the util function deepCompare() now works with JavaScript Set, Map, Buffer, and RegExp objects.
• Developer Tools: documented util function hash() (it's been around a while, just not documented).
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.5.5

[toggledbits]

MQTTController build 24155

NOTE: This build contains only compatibility changes; no bug fixes or new features.

• Small change to preserve compatibility with older builds of Reactor; this in particular is to ensure that users of the stable release branch are able to use the latest version of this controller.

[toggledbits]

Reactor STABLE Update

The stable branch of Reactor is now updated to build 24057. For changes, please scroll back and see the changes and advisory listed since the previous stable branch build (which was 23344).

IMPORTANT: Bare-metal users will need to update installed packages (see note here) and be aware of the breaking change notification (same link).

NOTE: This will be the last stable branch release that supports versions of nodejs < 18. If you haven't yet upgraded nodejs on your system, you will need to do so before the next stable update (an even-numbered LTS version is recommended). This applies to bare-metal users only; docker users have compatible versions of nodejs built into the Reactor distribution image.

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24190

BREAKING CHANGE: Home Assistant versions prior to 2023.6 are no longer supported. Going forward, you may expect HassController to support Home Assistant releases made in the last 12 months. Older releases may continue to work, but will rececive a warning at startup, and may cause errors (that I will not troubleshoot or fix/work around). Special workarounds for pecularities of releases older than 24 months will be removed from the code (meaning versions of Home Assistant older than that will almost certainly have issues).

• Access Control: setting the session timeout to 0 in users.yaml disables timed-based session expiration.
• PR 0000374: Rolling refresh appears not to work (many UI operations don't cause enough activity to stimulate the refresh).
• PR 0000371: Localization for login page submit button.
• Conditions: Ignore excess whitespace in comma-separated list of values for "in" and "not in" condition operators.
• Rule UI: Hovering over a condition's value in a rule detail card now shows info for current and previous value.
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.7.0

MQTTController build 24162

• Address an issue with action configuration in a template stomping on the action definition in the parent capability.
• Ensure deep copy of template applied to entity.
• Fix an initialization issue when multiple instances of MQTTController are configured.

[toggledbits]

EnvisalinkController build 24191

This is the initial release of a Controller for Envisalink EVL4 alarm panel interfaces. The controller currently supports only Honeywell panels, but I'm happy to work with anyone who has an EVL4-connected DSC panel to get that working as well.

Distribution package is available in the extras folder of the download site.

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24212

• PR 0000376: Search by name is now available on the Reactions list (similar to Entities list).
• Attribute security_mode.state recognizes max value.
• Action security_mode.set_mode now takes code argument (if not given, the default code in the Controller's configuration will be applied, if available).
• Dashboard: support /dashboard/group/<group-canonical-id> path for direct display of a group.
• PR 0000375: Fix a path where a global variable (expressionless) could have its value modified and not update variables that depend on it.
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.7.3

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24243

POTENTIAL BREAKING CHANGE: The conditions in a Reaction's repeat...while group are meant to be Constraints, not Triggers -- they are stateless, meaning that they are evaluated each time they are run, not when an underlying condition triggers them (such as a timer expiring on a sustained for option). This was always meant to be the case, but an error in the UI implementation permitted certain condition options applicable only to trigger conditions. This is now fixed, and any constraints containing condition options will have those options removed during later editing, and the options will not function (they haven't been working correctly anyway) until that time.

• Shell Command action now supports expression substitution. This makes an already dangerous (security-wise) action even moreso, so it must be enabled explicitly by setting allow_shell_action_substitution: true in the engine configuration section of reactor.yaml. It is highly recommended that Shell Command actions only be used on systems that have HTTPS access and Access Control (user authentication) enabled, to reduce the possibility that the action could be a vector for attacking the host system and your network.
• PR 0000378: VirtualEntityController: fix configuration collision between virtual entities affecting time-series aggregations.
• PR 0000369: Add error attribute for ev_charger system capability documentation.
• PR 0000349: Support custom sounds for Pushover notification.
• PR 0000290: Display rule ID in rule editor (convenience).
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.8.3

ZWaveJSController 24242

BREAKING CHANGE WARNING: The entity IDs of certain child entities may change to reflect a more deterministic naming style. Entities principally effected would be those created in 2022 and earlier for scene activation. Rules that use these entities will need to be updated.

• Handle notification special events (in Notification CC 113 type 6) for locks for better performance of keypad capability attributes (where the device and Z-Wave JS support it).
• Update Fibaro FGR222/FGRM222 handling for manufacturer proprietary venetian blind position and tilt
• Creation of child entities is expanded to include all command classes that result in capability/attribute collisions on an entity. That is, if two or more values (from Z-Wave JS) on an endpoint resolve to the same Reactor capability, a new child entity is created.

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24257

• System Capabilities: the new tag system capability has been introduced to extend data and behavior for RFID tags and similar devices.
• HassController: Implement tag_scanned event handling, which creates a new entity from the tag ID. This entity is updated whenever Hass reports that the tag is detected any scanning device. This automatic event handling does not preempt or prevent user-configurable event handling for different behavior, if desired.
• HassController: Improve the initialization of event-driven entities so they are not cleared every time Reactor is restarted (they will be cleared only if a configuration change is detected).
• HassController: The event processor now ensures that time_fired is included in the event data before handling. If not, Reactor will provide it. In addition, since Hass passes time_fired as a string, Reactor will parse the string to an Epoch time (seconds since midnight Jan 1, 1970 UTC) and provide it in time_fired_epoch, which can be used in user configuration for events.
• HassController: Allow filtering of state attributes to reduce rule re-evaluation traffic for related entities. (see docs)
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.9.1

ZWaveJSController build 24257

• Fix an issue with polling rescheduling that can cause polling to take too long to re-poll a node after the initial poll.
• Handle forced-write of attributes when processing events for the Notification Command Class.

MQTTController build 24257

• Code cleanups and minor bug fixes; mostly changes to sync with evolution of various system capabilities.

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24293

BARE-METAL USERS: UPDATE YOUR PACKAGES! You must remove any package-lock.json file in your Reactor install directory and run npm i --no-save --no-package-lock --omit dev after unpacking the Reactor distribution archive. Failure to do so will result in a non-functioning UI (notably non-working dark mode) and many other issues.

POTENTIAL BREAKING CHANGE: The validity of characters in entity IDs is now enforced. Previously, only a warning was written to the log if the ID contained invalid characters; now, the entity will not be allowed to exist. If you use VirtualEntityController, MQTTController, or other Controllers where you can configurably create entities, the IDs you establish for those entities must now contain only valid characters, which are ASCII alphanumerics, dash (-), underscore (_), and the high ASCII ranges 192-214, 216-246, and 248-255 (which covers some letters with diacritics). Other characters, including Unicode characters outside this range, are not permitted.

POTENTIAL BREAKING CHANGE: The alert attributes have been moved off of the Reactor System (reactor_system>system) entity on to a separate Reactor System Alerts (reactor_system>alerts) entity. If you have Rules or Reactions that use alert data in conditions, you will need to point them to the new entity/attributes.

LOCALIZATION UPDATE: There are several new strings in the reference localization template (new version 24293). See the Github repository for the current reference version and change log.

• Entity action implementations can now return values/results and store them directly to a local (Rule-based) or global variable for further processing. Note that HassController was previously (in build 24115) given this ability in a slightly different form, where the response was written to a single attribute from which it could be retrieved by other expressions. HassController will support both mechanisms for the foreseeable future, but transition to the new mechanism is recommended.
• New Script Action action in Reactions allows you to run an expression/script in-line in a Reaction. This is intended to simplify handing of results from Entity Actions that return results.
• Fixed a bug in the changes operator where, if there were terminal values (values for changes from, to, or both), the output would pulse rather than "stick." The design intent was such that it should stick, because a change with terminal values is predictably persistent (i.e. a condition that watches for an alarm panel state change from disarmed to away will go true and should stay true as long as the alarm panel remains in away state). When there are no terminal values, a change is still signalled with a pulse (i.e. a change from any value to any other value produces a pulse, and is then ready to signal a change to yet another value).
• Capabilities may now define user-writable attributes, and the user may set the value of such an attribute on an entity. The intent of this feature is to provide storage for user preference in actions (such as the amount to change the light level when performing dimming.up), but could have many other uses. To make an attribute user-writable, the developer must include writable: true in the attribute definition. Attributes derived from device data (like switch state or blind position; i.e. where a Controller instance controls the value) are not writable by the user and should not be made user-writable by developers. User-writable attribute values can be set using the new Set Attribute button in Entity list detail cards, or using the reactor_entity.set_attribute action.
• New reactor_entity capability is extended to all entities, and contains actions to rename the entity and set its writable attributes.
• Additional work to preserve the state of attributes across upgrades/changes to underlying capabilities and implementations. The new Controller methods refreshCapabilites() and refreshCapability() provide a mechanism for updating an Entity's stored capability data without losing the values of attributes and metadata that exist in both the old and new versions of a capability.
• Logger now supports (via logging.yaml entry) the rotation of log files on specific intervals. The maxage: time configuration can be added, where time is an integer followed by secs, mins, hours, or days. These may be abbreviated to a single character (e.g. 1d or 4h). If the time is an integer only, the units are assumed to be days.
• DynamicGroupController now supports an expanded form of group_actions configuration to more narrowly specify which actions are to be made available as group actions. See the Group Actions section of the documentation for DynamicGroupController.
• UI now has a dark theme (long-awaited).
• UI (Reaction Editor) for HTTP Request action now shows more clearly that when storing response to a variable, it must wait for the response to complete (i.e. when you choose a target variable, it automatically checks the "Wait for" checkbox in addition to disabling it). The semantics of this have been documented since inception, but the UI now reinforces the concept in its display.
• UI (Entities List) detail cards for Entities now have a Perform dropdown to run actions, rather than a list of links. The selected action is performed immediately if it has no arguments; otherwise, the arguments are requested in a modal dialog as before. This should improve access to actions on entities from this area.
• New expression functions from updated lexpjs: isvalue(), scale(), constrain(). See docs for Expressions.
• PR 0000380: Resolve an issue with an optional argument in a HAss-specific service requiring a value in the action editor (service climate.set_temperature for example).
• A (very) simple log file viewer/fetcher is now available at /api/v1/log. The optional file query parameter can be given to select which log file (by name); by default, reactor.log is displayed. This endpoint is protected when access control is enabled, so if you are using access control, you may need to modify an existing ACL or create a new one to enable access to it.
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.10.3

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Reactor build 24296

UPGRADE NOTICE: If you are upgrading to this version from earlier than 24293, please update your packages! See the notes and instructions for build 24293 above for instructions and other notices.

• Fix a race condition when painting the Status tab when painting a widget that must traverse the ruleset index.
• Make sure errors thrown by widgets show in the widget container, not by popping the exception dialog.
• Fix activation of the Expressions tab so it paints every time (a guard for edit mode was too aggressive, because this tab is always in edit mode).
• Fix a number of reported appearance issues, and some new ones.

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24302

UPGRADE NOTICE: If you are upgrading to this version from earlier than 24293, please see the notes and instructions for 24293 for additional actions you need to perform during upgrade.

• You may supply a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) containing customizations for Bootstrap 5.3 in a file called config/customstyles.css. This allows you to further adjust theme colors to your liking. For instructions on how to customize Bootstrap styles, refer to its documentation.
• PR 0000383 (and 385): The changes operator was not allowing "pulse" output option. It is now allowed (whether terminal values are used or not).

NUTController build 24303

• PR 0000384: Fix an error that may be thrown when the NUT client library fails to get the UPS list from the service. This error prevents the real error from being logged properly.

[toggledbits]

Reactor STABLE Update

The stable branch of Reactor is now updated to build 24257. For changes, please scroll back and see the changes and advisory listed since the previous stable branch build (which was 24057).

IMPORTANT: Bare-metal users will need to update installed packages (run npm i --no-save --no-package-lock --omit-dev in the Reactor install directory).

NOTE: This stable branch build no longer supports nodejs versions under 18. If you are installing Reactor bare-metal (i.e. not using docker), please make sure you have upgraded to nodejs 18+. An even-numbered LTS (Long-Term Support) version of nodejs is recommended.

[toggledbits]

Reactor build 24343

BARE-METAL USERS: Please run npm run deps from your Reactor install directory to upgrade packages. Remove any existing package-lock.json file first if it exists. These steps are only required for bare-metal installs (does not apply to Docker).

NOTE: Notable UI Change: removing widgets on the Status tab now requires you to drag the widget (by its header) to the top navigation bar and release it there. Previously, moving a widget anywhere outside the content panel would remove it, but this was troublesome for small touch displays (too easy to remove items while scrolling).

NOTE: If your Current Alerts widget displays two menu icons in its header, remove the widget (by dragging it to the top nav bar and releasing it), and then create a new replacement Current Alerts widget.

• PR 0000389: Improve mobile device compatibility. Although many aspects of the UI have been tweaked for better presentation on small displays, it will continue to be the case that editing of major system objects (Rules, Reactions, Expressions) is a high-interactivity task, and the design goals do not and will not include "mobile first" compatibility for that.
• PR 0000387: Make VirtualEntityController operation of reactor_system.set_attribute action identical to (and in fact, just an alias for) x_virtualentity.set_attribute. On virtual entities, all attributes are de-facto writable.
• PR 0000386: Fix an issue with HubitatController where it could attempt to set NaN on an attribute, generating a warning in the log.
• The Reaction List has been modified to show a spinner while a Reaction is running, rather than holding a green highlight.
• Fix an issue with the Reaction List not repainting correctly after editing a (global) reaction.
• Additional hard-coded colors in some CSS styles have been removed in favor of CSS variables (Bootstrap- or Reactor-defined). This should help user making custom themes.
• Improve the error message given when a script/expression attempts to set a global variable that is not writable (i.e. it's not expressionless).
• The default action handlers for increasing/decreasing values in dimming, position, and volume capabilities has been updated to more consistently move in increments of the related step value. For example, when the current dimming level is 0.55 (55%), the dimming.up action with a step of 0.1 will move to 0.6 rather than 0.65 as previously implemented. Not all devices/Controllers use the default action handlers for these actions — if the Controller implements its own semantics, this change has no effect.
• VirtualEntityController can now do HTTP requests in actions. This allows you to create a virtual entity that functions as an interface for a device that is HTTP-controllable without the need to write a custom Controller instance. See the docs for VirtualEntityController for updated section on actions.
• HassController: Bless Hass to 2024.11.3

I am working on some bigger structural changes to Reactor, and have been for a while now. In the interest of finishing those changes, the rate of latest builds is going to go down for a bit. I will, of course, address any serious issues that need fixing during that time.