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

card-tools v. 0.4 and any plugins that require it works only with Home Assistant 0.87 or later.

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: js

resources:
- url: /customcards/github/thomasloven/card-tools.js?track=true
  type: js

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

BREAKING CHANGES IN VERSION 0.3 Please read changelog below

card-tools defines a global object cardTools which contains some helpful functions and stuff.

To make sure card-tools is installed, add the following line to the start of the setConfig() function of your custom card:

To make sure card-tools is loaded before your plugin, wait for customElements.whenDefined("card-tools") to resolve.

Example:

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.

The following functions are defined:

Another way to use the card-tools is to just copy the function you want, and paste it into your card. It requires a bit of more work, but may be more user friendly.

Those functions are just there to make sure the user has the right version of card-tools. I may add more functions later, and then you can make sure that those are supported by the version the user has. I recommend adding a check as soon as possible, such as in the setConfig() function of a custom card/element/entity row.

setConfig(config) {
  cardTools.checkVersion(0.1);
  ...

For information: I plan to increase the version number when I add functions. Not for bug fixes.

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');

This object contains information about the users lovelace configuration. As a bonus cardTools.lovelace.current_view contains the index of the currently displayed view.

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!

Currently, the Home Assistant frontend is being converted to LitElement based elements, rather than Polymer based, since those are faster and easier to use. If you wish to make your element LitElement based, those may help.

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

There's also a cardTools.createThing(thing, config) which is a helper function for those three. You'll probably never need to access it directly, but it might be good to know that it's there...

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 make browsers usable as media players in lovelace-player. In short, a media-deviceID pair is sent to every browser currently viewing the lovelace UI, but only if the deviceId matches cardTools.deviceID() is the media played. That way, I can make a sound play only on my ipad, even if I have the same page open on my computer.

I'm sure this can have lots of uses.

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

This can be used to open the more-info dialog for an entity.

render() {
  return cardTools.LitHtml`
  <paper-button
  @click="${cardTools.moreInfo("light.bed_light");}"
  >
  Click me!
  </paper-button>
  `;
}

Some elements in Lovelace can perform two different actions when they are clicked and clicked-and-held. This lets you give this capability to any element.

Once an element has been bound to longpress, it will be able to receive ha-click and ha-hold events.

render() {
  return cardTools.LitHtml`
  <paper-button
  @click="${cardTools.moreInfo("light.bed_light");}"
  @ha-click="${console.log('I was clicked')}"
  @ha-hold="${console.log('I was held')}"
  >
  Click or hold me!
  </paper-button>
  `;
}

firstUpdated() {
  cardTools.longpress(this.shadowRoot.querySelector('paper-button'));
}

cardTools.parseTemplate lets you parse a user specified template like [[ light.bed_light.state ]] and return the result.

Two things are important:

• Template must start with [[<space> and end with <space>]]
• This is not in any way the same kind of template as used in the Home Assistant configuration

The templates are parsed by reading one step at a time from the hass.states object. Thus, the first part must be an entity with domain and id, e.g. light.bed_light, media_player.bedroom etc. Next is one of:

• entity_id
• state
• attributes.<attribute>
• last_changed
• last_updated

The function replaces any template found in the supplied string with the requested value, or an error message on failure.

The optional argument data can be an object containing extra data for templates. In a template {key} will be evaluated to data[key].

cardTools.hasTemplate just checks if a string contains a simple state template.

Lovelace plugins are imported by placing a script URL in the resources section of ui-lovelace.yaml or the Raw editor. This URL can be followed by query parameters.

resources:
  - url: /local/my-plugin.js?height=5&flag&width=10&
    type: js

If called from my-plugin.js cardTools.args() will return the javascript object {height: 5, flag: undefined, width: 10}.

If called from a callback function, cardTools.args requires the parameter script in order to determine the current script. It should have the value of document.currentScript, but must be defined outside of the callback scope.

Returns the translation of certain strings (defined by string keys) to the users language.

Examples of keys:

• "state.light.on"
• "state.binary_sensor.garage_door.off"
• "domain.fan"
• "attribute.weather.humidity"

More can be found by exploring cardTools.hass().resources.

This function opens a dialog similar to the more-info dialog but with the title and message specified. Set large to true to attempt to open a wider dialog

This function closes a popup or more-info dialog.

This function allows the user to enable a debug mode by adding ?debug to the url: in their resources when importing your card. Messages printed with cardTools.logger() will only be shown if the debug mode is active.

The script parameter is required if cardTools.logger is called from within a callback function. See the description of cardTools.args for more information.

0.2

• Added parseTemplate() function

0.3

• LitElement renamed to litElement
• cardTools.litElement(), cardTools.litHtml and cardtools.deviceID() are now functions
• Updated recommendation for how to check if card-tools exists
• Added hasTemplate() to documentation
• Added args() function
• Added localize() function

0.4

• cardTools.LitElement reintroduced. It is not a function
• cardTools.LitHtml introduced. It is not a function
• cardTools.v() removed and replaced with cardTools.version (kind of breaking, but I don't think anyone uses it...)
• cardTools.deviceID() removed and replaced with cardTools.deviceID (kind of breaking, but I don't think anyone uses it...)
• cardTools.hass() deprecated and replaced with cardTools.hass
• cardTools.LitCSS added
• cardTools.lovelace added
• cardTools.popup() added
• cardTools.closePopUp() added
• cardTools.logger() added
• Added script parameter to cardTools.args