OH2 cloud connector - how to expose all items?

[llegovich (Luciano)]

HI community,
I’d like to expose all items through the cloud connector. I was wondering if there is any way to set the connector to expose all items without selecting them 1 by 1. This would allow also new items to be automatically exposed.
thanks.

[rossko57]

Nope. This thread talks about it

Expose groups

There appears to be no special handling for Group items (see the code here). It makes sense to me to require users to enumerate each item s/he wants to expose to the cloud service, in order to control the volume of work that the free cloud service must do, and to require users to be mindful of specifically what information they are exposing to 3rd party services. The Paper UI configuration under openHAB 2 makes this a bit easier to work with than editing the text file, but even that is not too…

[hmerk (Hans-Jörg Merk)]

Why do you want to expose all Items ?

[llegovich (Luciano)]

@hmerk

Why do you want to expose all Items ?

just want to access my HABPanel dashboards from internet without listing all items and keeping the list up-to-date.

[Dim (Angelos)]

Imagine if there was an option to allow * to be exposed… hundreds of OH2 systems using the OH2 Cloud connector would expose thousands of Items to the myopenhab.org Cloud … effectively collapsing it…
we would create a botnet

If you want to do more advanced stuff, look into: https://www.openhab.org/docs/installation/security.html#setting-up-nginx

(but this doesn’t offer integration to other cloud platforms like Google, Alexa, etc)

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@llegovich

just want to access my HABPanel dashboards from internet without listing all items and keeping the list up-to-date.

You don’t need to expose ANY Items to use HABPanel over myopenhab.org. The UIs work through the REST API which is independently exposed through myopenhab.org. You only need to expose Items that you want to use with external services like IFTTT. You do not need to expose Items to use them for Google Assistant nor Alexa. So unless you are using IFTTT you really don’t need to expose any Items at all.

Please don’t expose all of your Items. As Dim explained, and as happened with the old way of exposing Items, there are so many users that if even a small fraction of OH users exposed all their Items it would kill the myopenhab.oirg users.

[llegovich (Luciano)]

@rlkoshak

You don’t need to expose ANY Items to use HABPanel

Great to hear, I was misinterpreting what exposing items is for. This resolves. Thanks.

[Sunil (WM Smarthome Research)]

Hi @rikoshak,
What if I want to integrate another 3rd party service in Openhab? Will I be exposing the same set of items? So far, my understanding is that OH doesn’t make 3rd party OAuth open to all. However, I read your tutorial but was unsure how exposing items work for multiple third-party service using the same Cloud Connector add-on.
Also, what if I have both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa but want to restrict “Lighting” tag for only one device (although, it’s rare to have both the devices in the same room)? Maybe I have a wrong understanding of the use of tags?

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

Right now, the only service that requires exposing Items using the Cloud Connector configuration is IFTTT. But if there were more, then they would all get the same set of Items.

Google Assistant and Alexa use Item tags. Unfortunately, if both GA and Alexa use the same tag for something there is no way to pick and choose which one gets the Item. They will both get access to the Item.

[Sunil (WM Smarthome Research)]

Thank you, @rikoshak!