So why is that renaming of an item not showing up? A tip for beginners

Setup, Configuration and Use Items & Sitemaps
1

This is not a question, it is just a tip for people maybe faced with the same issue

Recently I wanted to rename the way some items appeared on my interface. Basically a translation from English into my own language.
No Sweat as it basically involves translating
"Ceilng light corridor is [%s]"
to
"Pladondlicht hal is [%s]"

Which worked for virtually all the modifications I made except one.

Somehow"Aquarium light is [%s]"
even when fully replaced by
"Aquariumlicht is [%s]"
would still show up as
"Aquarium light is [ON]"
on my screen.
At first I thought it was probably still cached somewhere, but it persisted. flushed the cache, restarted OpenHab, but it remained “Aquarium light” instead of “Aquariumlicht”

At these moments it is good to realize that OpenHab is not some magic program that is out to frustrate you, but that there is a simple explanation for everything.
And yes there was: I had an old items file in which i had defined the same item. That still used the english text.
Deleting that items file solved the issue.
So, be aware that if you have different items files, they may well influence eachother if you have defined items with similar names.

Now why when I start my “home” application, openhab still gets info from a “test.items” file rather than from its own “home.items” file is still a riddle to me, but I have no need to solve that :slight_smile:

3 Likes
2

openHAB loads ALL the files that end with .items in the items folder regardless of their name. You must completely remove the file if you don’t want it to be loaded.

3

Thanks, yes I suspected that already. Anyway, removed it all, solved it :slight_smile: samething happens if you keep older versions that still have the ‘item’ extension

4

I rename files I do not want to be used like so:
energy.items --> energy.items.txt

This means I know what is in it and that it is a .items type.
And if you use Windows editors to modify these file, the .txt is associated with an editor.

5

yes I do that too now xxx.items_bu or something. In my early days, when I started over with sitemaps and items I quickly learned that just a new title, leaving the extension in tact, caused many problems :slight_smile: