Detect Item state type

[DiLucca]

I’m trying to use a Rule as a global function but I need to be able to detect if the value of ItemName.state is a String or a Number (to act accordingly)

Uses:

ItemName.sendCommand(“String Here”)
ItemName.sendCommand(1)

Item:

String ItemName

I’ve tried this but with no luck:

if (ItemName.state instanceof DecimalType) {…

[vzorglub (Vincent Regaud)]

What exactly do you want to achieve here?
Can you post the whole rule as it is and explain your ultimate goal?
Thanks

[DiLucca]

I’m trying to create a sort of Global Function (to broadcast notifications) that other rules can call, and I want to be able to send either Strings (ie “Presence Detected”) or Numbers (ie 1). So the rule needs to know if the state received is a Number in order to map it to the respective string with a transform.

In short, I was not able to figure-out a way to detect if a string state contains just a number.

As far as I understand I can not create functions inside the rules.

[vzorglub (Vincent Regaud)]

Create 2 items, one a String item and the other a Number item

Create a rule where the trigger is one of these 2 items received command

In the rule select the source with the implicit variable triggeringItem

String myString
Number myNumber

rule "send notification"
when
    Item myString received command or
    Item myNumber received command
then
    if (triggeringItem.name == "myString") {
        // Send String notification
    } else {
        // Send Number notification
    }
end

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@DiLucca

So the rule needs to know if the state received is a Number in order to map it to the respective string with a transform.

Why go through this extra step? Why but just set the Item with the Stein in the first place?

@DiLucca

As far as I understand I can not create functions inside the rules.

There is. They are called lambdas. But if you stay to head down that path you usually end up with long brittle code that doesn’t work that well.

Reusable Functions: A simple lambda example with copious notes

Major Edit: Rewrote with the cleaner OH 2.3 syntax. The example lambda on the OH 1 wiki is overly complex and as written will not work in OH 2. This quick example will show a super simple lambda example with copious notes. Here is the code without comments. It takes in an Item, logs it’s state and returns a slightly modified version of the String logged. val log= [ GenericItem s | logInfo("lambda", s.state.toString) s.state.toString + " logged" ] rule "Call Lambda" when // some t…

What you are trying to do is actually written up as a design pattern. Design Pattern: Separation of Behaviors

An alternative approach to what @vzorglub recommends (note the typo, it’s missing the second.= In the if statement) is

if(receivedCommand instance of DecimalType) //do number stuff

[DiLucca]

Thanks for the ideas! For my particular use case I ended up breaking the logic into two Rules, one (master) that only deals with Strings, and another that transform the Number into a String before forwarding to the master rule.