After taking the plunge into using openHAB 2 (coming from FHEM), I got to know and like “Paper UI”. So I did all my configs there (without any rules yet), added items and such.
First, I was under the suspicion that those configs are getting saved to files in the system, but they’re not as they move straight to some db file.
So my question is: am I able to export this data back into normal files which are editable? I like the idea to “auto discover” items / things (like FHEM is able to), but I still want to use the text files to configure everything.
I’m interested in this behaviour too.
Is it “by design” that you have to jump back and forth between paperUI and Smarthome Designer (where you edit files)?
The answer is “it depends”. You can certainly do a lot within PaperUI, and even more through Habmin, but there are some things you will have to edit as files. And anything you do through the UIs get saved to a database and not text files so once you create an Item or Thing in a UI you have to use the UI to update and manage that Item from now on. But there are simply some things the UIs are not yet capable of doing, like creating sitemaps or dealing with 1.9 bindings really well.
A lot of old timers, myself included, prefer text files for most everything. But that doesn’t mean doing things through the UIs are wrong or not recommended. Just realize you will be making some compromises when going through the UIs in terms of human readable and editable configs.
The link Kai provided is useful for those who choose to use the UIs and backup their configs and understand where the data is stored…
One thing to note is there is a PR that needs to be reviewed I think that replaces the binary opaque config db with a JSON barred db which will be a bit more user and configuration management friendly than the current MapDB approach.
