search

openhab / openhab-core

Core framework of openHAB
https://www.openhab.org/
Eclipse Public License 2.0
923 stars 424 forks source link

[Sitemap] Provide default value formatting for DateTime items #3835

Closed dilyanpalauzov closed 5 months ago

dilyanpalauzov commented 1 year ago

Which UI are you reporting an issue for?

The problem

In .items file I define

DateTime t1

and in a sitemap file:

Default item=t1

Expected behavior

The system shall display the value of the item in some way formatted, and emphasize when it is NULL or UNDEF. Currently as long as I do not insert in the item’s label [%1$tH:%1$tM:%1$tS], BasicUI shows no value.

lolodomo commented 1 year ago

This iscertainly something to do in core framework. I remember I added that for string and number a very long time ago. I am not sure I did it for dates, maybe it did not know what could be a good default formatting. Unfortunately, I do not find this code anymore. Either it was removed or I don't search it in the good class.

lolodomo commented 1 year ago

Found it, it was 6 years ago: https://github.com/eclipse-archived/smarthome/pull/3822

I was not looking at the right place. It is done in the channel state description provider, when no default pattern is set in the channel. I correctly remembered, it was done only for channel with item type string or number. I did not add something for datetime just because I was not sure what could be a good default pattern. A valid default would be different in UK/US and in France for example. https://github.com/openhab/openhab-core/blob/main/bundles/org.openhab.core.thing/src/main/java/org/openhab/core/thing/internal/ChannelStateDescriptionProvider.java#L109

By the way, all this was for item/widget without any state pattern but with the item linked to a channel. For an unlinked item, that is true that there is no default formatting, even for a string/number item.

lolodomo commented 1 year ago

If I am not wrong (to be verified), using "%s" as format will show the internal system representation of the date/time. Could be an acceptable default ?

lolodomo commented 1 year ago

Having channels provided by bindings without a default pattern is also a wrong practice, so it should not happen if bindings were providing a default pattern.

dilyanpalauzov commented 1 year ago

I have two DateTime items. One is bound to an EnOcean channel lastReceived. The other is modified in a DSL rule by getting x.postUpdate(new DateTime). Initially both items have a label without [ and ] and therefore without %s between[ and ].

I start my system anew. These items do not display values in a sitemap. Then I add [%s] to the labels in the .items-file. In the sitemap now I can see value of the DateTime item. I remove [%s] from the labels in the .items file. I can still see the value of the items in the sitemap file.

So the problem report is that there is no implicit [%s] added to the label of DateTime items, as this is done for other item types.

The other problem report is that removing [%s] from the labels in the .items file does not change the display, which suggests that missing and present [%s] are the same, but they are not.

lolodomo commented 1 year ago

@kaikreuzer : please move this feature request to the core repo.