Assign a group to an existing item(Paper UI)

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
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  • Platform information:
    • Hardware: Raspi 3b+
    • OS: openhabian
    • openHAB version: 2.5.4
  • Issue of the topic:

I have created 30+ things via the Paper UI which are working just fine, however i want use grouping in order to have less buttons etc. on HABpanel and for several other reason.

If i go to item level, i do see the group field but cannot edit it. Creating a group is no problem. I also switched from standard to expert package but this doesnt help and creates more issues then expected.

Is there another way or do i need to have an additonal itmes file for each item?

Please advise as couldnt find an applicable solution for it online.

Regards

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I do not use PaperUI for Items, only files, and most will recommend to do the same. Files give you more flexibility with the items name, tags, groups, etc… I know this is not an answer for adding items to a group in PaperUI but give files a try and see what you think. Also, you may be able to use REST API to add items to a group?

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There is a little bit of a mix in terminology here that might indicate some confusion.

There is no such thing as a Group for Things. There are only Groups for Items.

HABPanel doesn’t display Things. It only displays Items.

So you need to link Items to the Channels of your Things. And then you can create a Group Item and add those Items to the Groups.

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4

Works for me
PaperUI > Configuration > Items > yourItem, click pencil
click in Parent Groups box, pops up a list to select from.

5

I didn’t know about about the REST API?! Can you point me to some documentation?

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Sorry for confusing. I am aware of the differences, however i am not able to insert any groups into the respective field. It behaves like greyed out.

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Neither can I. It provides a pop-up list when clicked on.

EDIT -I’ll take that back, can type in while list is displayed and auto-whittled down

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Just out of curiosity…

Were this Items created while your instance of openHAB2 had “Simple Linking” switched on?

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Hi MDAR.,

yes thats correct. Thats why i tried to switch to “expert” package in the config.

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And nothing of that is showing on my itmes.

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Perhaps you could show us what you have got?

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Please see one of my enocean actuators.

EDIT: as soon as i create an item nanually, i can add grou to it:

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So it 's probably connected to @MDAR’s post

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That Item name looks like an auto-created Item.

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It’s my experience…

Any items created while openHAB2 is in “simple linking” mode are not editable via PaperUI.

FYI

“Simple linking” can be turned off by going to PaperUI > Configuration > system

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I have done this, but it doesnt change. I believe changing the json file is a bad idea?

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Correct, once the item is created when in Simply Linking mode, there is nothing more that can be done with it.

You can always create a second Item and link it to the same Thing channel.

(If for nothing more than proving the point and getting something working for now)

Maybe you can delete the automatically created Item???

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@pking you can delete the items from /var/lib/openhab2/jsondb/org.eclipse.smarthome.core.items.Item.json

The links you can delete from /var/lib/openhab2/jsondb/org.eclipse.smarthome.core.thing.link.ItemChannelLink.json

If you edit either of these files stop OH first.

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Thank you all. So the final solution is to delete the respective item in Paper UI and create a copy if it manually. This allows to assign a group to the individual items.

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