Hello openhab community,
for my new binding I would like to define things with different channels, where at the first installation of thuch a thing not all channels should be linked.
Currently all channels are linked from the beginning, but I would like to control this.
How can I achieve this? I would be very pleased about a tip.
Thanks in advance
rainer
Channels are not linked by default. So your probably referring to what happens when you add a thing via PaperUI. PaperUI links all channels unless there marked advanced in the thing xml. You can use advanced to not link the channels automatically, but that might not be for what advanced is intended for. It’s for specifying if a channel is functionality not used in the most common use cases for a thing, but for additional functionality. It might be this overlaps with what you want to achieve. But that’s up to you.
In Paper UI, Configuration -> System -> disable Simple mode which will prevent auto creation of item links for all channels.
You can then create them manually via Paper / Habmin or item files.
@hilbrand I also thought that a Paper UI related mechanism is responsible for auto linking. This is actually not the case as I recently found out while reading core sources.
Even if you setup a complete UI less (means no REST at all) system, it will still auto link channels of the managed think provider (used by REST and console commands) by default.
I think I’ll open a core issue to discuss a better approach I have in mind. The typical recommendation in the community is indeed to turn auto-linking off.
Cheers, David
That is definitely my recommendation. The Item names end up being long and meaningless and as soon as you need to do anything at all beyond the default, which happens pretty quickly even for the newest and least technical of users, they have to switch auto linking back off.
It’s really more trouble than it’s worth IMHO and I for one would not be unhappy to see that feature dropped.