card-tools version 2

This is a collection of tools to simplify creating custom cards for Home Assistant

Installation instructions

If you see "Can't find card-tools. [...]" in your Home Assistant UI, follow these instructions.

To install card-tools follow this guide.

The recommended type of this plugin is: module

resources:
  url: /local/card-tools.js
  type: module

User instructions

That's all. You don't need to do anything else.

Card Developer Instructions

There are two ways you can get access to the card-tools functions.

1. If you are using npm and a packager:

Add the package as a dependency

> npm install thomasloven/lovelace-card-tools

And then import the parts you want

import { LitElement } from "card-tools/src/lit-element";

2. Have your users add card-tools.js to their lovelace resources and access the functions through the card-tools customElement:

customElements.whenDefined('card-tools').then(() => {
  var cardTools = customElements.get('card-tools');
  // YOUR CODE GOES IN HERE

  class MyPlugin extends cardTools.LitElement {
    setConfig(config) {
      this.name = config.name;
    }

    render() {
      return cardTools.LitHtml`
        ${this.name}
      `;
    }
  }

  customElements.define("my-plugin", MyPlugin);
}); // END OF .then(() => {

setTimeout(() => {
  if(customElements.get('card-tools')) return;
  customElements.define('my-plugin', class extends HTMLElement{
    setConfig() { throw new Error("Can't find card-tools. See https://github.com/thomasloven/lovelace-card-tools");}
  });
}, 2000);

The setTimeout block at the end will make your element display an error message if card-tools is not found. Make sure the element name is the same in both customElements.define() calls.

Functions

card-tools/src/deviceID

deviceID

This can be used to uniquely identify the device connected to Lovelace. Or actually, the device-browser combination.

It generates a random number, and stores it in the browsers local storage. That means it will stay around for quite a while.

It's kind of hard to explain, but as an example I use this to identify the browser for browser_mod.

I'm sure this can have lots of more uses.

The device ID is stored in localstorage with a key called lovelace-player-device-id (for historical reasons).

card-tools/src/event

fireEvent(ev, detail) / `cardTools.fireEvent(...)

This is mainly used as a helper for some other functions of cardTools, but it could be useful to fire a lovelace event sometime, such as "config-refresh" perhaps? Explore!

card-tools/src/hass

hass() / cardTools.hass

This is provided for plugins that aren't cards, elements or entity rows. For those three kinds, the hass object is kindly provided to you by the whatever loads your element, but if you wish to write something that doesn't have a representation in the DOM, this can give you access to all of Home Assistants power anyway.

  ...
  greeting.innerHTML = `Hi there, ${cardTools.hass.user.name}`;
  cardTools.hass.connection.subscribeEvents((event) => {console.log("A service was called in Home Assistant")}, 'call-service');

Note that this is called as a function if imported, but is a direct property of the cardTools element.

lovelace() / cardTools.lovelace

This object contains information about the users lovelace configuration. As a bonus lovelace().current_view contains the index of the currently displayed view.
Note that this is called as a function if imported, but is a direct property of the cardTools element.

lovelace_view() / cardTools.lovelace_view()

Return a reference to the lovelace view object.

provideHass(element) / cardTools.provideHass(...)

Will make sure element.hass is set and updated whenever the hass object is updated (i.e. when any entity state changes).

load_lovelace()

Evaluating this function will load in the lovelace interface and all customElements of it, such as ha-card. This is not provided in the card-tools element, because that wouldn't make sense.

card-tools/src/lit-element

LitElement / cardTools.LitElement

The lit-element base class. Using this could save you a few bytes.

html / cardTools.LitHtml

css / cardTools.LitCSS

The html and css functions from lit-element.

card-tools/src/action

bindActionHandler(element, options) / `cardTools.longpress(...)

This binds element to the action-handler of lovelace, which manages different special click/tap actions such as long-press or double click.

Once bound, the element will receive action events whenever something happens.

render() {
  return html`
    <div
      id="my-clickable-div"
      @action=${(ev) => console.log("I was clicked, or something", ev)

    >
      Double-tap me!
    </div>`;
}

firstUpdated() {
  bindActionHandler(this.shadowRoot.querySelector("#my-clickable-div"), {hasHold: true, hasDoubleClick: true});
}

card-tools/src/lovelace-element.js

createCard(config) / cardTools.createCard(...)

createElement(config) / cardTools.createElement(...)

createEntityRow(config) / cardTools.createEntityRow(...)

Currently, custom elements can be used in three places in Lovelace; as cards, as elements in a picture-elements card or as rows in an entities card.

Those functions creates a card, element or row safely and cleanly from a config object. They handle custom elements and automatically picks the most suitable row for an entity. In short, it's mainly based on - and works very similar to - how Lovelace handles those things natively.

const myElement = createElement({
  type: "state-icon",
  entity: "light.bed_light",
  hold_action: {action: "toggle"},
});

card-tools/src/card-maker

Importing this file (or adding card-tools.js the lovelace resources) will define three new customElements, card-maker, element-maker and entity-row-maker which acts as wrappers for cards, elements and entity rows respectively. Very useful for e.g. cards which contain other cards:

render() {
  return html`
  <ha-card>
    <card-maker
      .config=${this.card1_config}
      .hass=${this.hass}
      ></card-maker>
    <card-maker
      .config=${this.card2_config}
      .hass=${this.hass}
      ></card-maker>
  </ha-card>`;
}

card-tools/src/more-info

moreInfo(entity, large=false) / cardTools.moreInfo(...)

Pops open the more-info dialog for entity.

card-tools/src/popup

popUp(title, card, large=false, style=null, fullscreen=false) / cardTools.popUp(...)

Opens up a dialog similar to the more-info dialog, but with the contents replaces by the lovelace card defined by card.

closePopUp() / cardTools.closePopUp()

Closes a popUp or more-info dialog.

card-tools/src/templates

parseTemplate(hass, str, variables) / cardTools.parseTemplate(hass, str, variables)

Renders and returns a jinja2 template in the backend. Only works if the currently logged in user is in the admin group.

subscribeRenderTemplate(conn, onChange, params) / cardTools.subscribeRenderTemplate(...)

Renders the jinja2 templates in parameters.template in the backend and sends the results to onChange whenever anything changes. Returns a function for canceling the subscription.

card-tools/src/old-templates

Relates to my Mod Plugin Templates which are rendered entirely in the frontend

hasOldTemplate(text)

Check if there is a template in text.

parseOldTemplate(text, data) / cardTools.parseTemplate(text, data)

Parses a template and returns the result.