Hello @David_Graeff
Is there a way to edit the file(s) of MQTT thing/channels created from Paper UI.
I want to add channels to a Thing, but since it is has similarities with the one I already created, it would be much easy to copy/paste/edit on a text/file where my Thing/Channel were saved than making channels on Paper UI.
1 Like
That’s a good question. With the syntax that I know you can either have one or the other. Maybe there is another syntax existing.
in theory, he could edit/modify his $OPENHAB_USERDATA/jsondb/org.eclipse.smarthome.core.thing.Thing.json file but this method has the disadvantage of “read only once upon startup”, so he would have to restart the entire OH2 service to implement any changes… (and manually editing this file is prone to config/syntax errors).
In general, we shouldn’t touch stuff within $OPENHAB_USERDATA 
(let the OH2 process manage those files)
In these cases, working with $OPENHAB_CONF/things/*.things files is better (as described: https://www.openhab.org/blog/2018-12-16-mqtt-arrives-in-the-modern-openhab-2-x-architecture.html#configuration-via-text-files)
3 Likes
Could you please add a button on Paper UI (MQTT-thing-channel) a Duplicate Button to duplicate my channel? So that I just edit the duplicate? Thank you in advance.
Such a button would extend the functionality of PaperUI and would not be limited to MQTT. Hence such a change would affect others and I am not sure if that is possible/desired.
Anyhow such a request would have to be filed on GitHub as a feature request for PaperUI.
I just made my mqtt.things file for the complete move of my productive system to openhab2.4.
Paste and copy in the .things file was pretty easy!