Keeping Alerts in Version Control

Keeping Alerts in Version Control

Alert Redux has no YAML configuration: alerts live in Home Assistant's config entries, and are edited in forms. But they can be exported to YAML and imported back, which gives you most of what YAML configuration did: a file to keep in git, review, share, and restore.

What's already safe

Alert definitions are part of Home Assistant's own configuration, so Home Assistant backups include them, along with their states. For disaster recovery, your usual backups are enough. Export is for the other things: history, review, sharing, and copying.

Exporting

• From the admin card: Export gives every alert and generator as YAML, to copy or download. Each row's Summary button can also show just that alert's YAML.
• From Developer tools → Actions: alert_redux.export, with Return response (optionally with entity_id to export only some; a generated alert gives its generator).

action: alert_redux.export
data:
  entity_id:
    - alert_redux.garage_door_left_open
    - alert_redux.water_leak

The file looks like the recipes in this wiki, with two differences: each definition has an id (its subentry ID), and notifier groups are named. Settings at their defaults are left out, so a file shows only what you chose. Notifier groups themselves, and alerts' areas and labels, aren't exported: create groups and labels by hand on a new instance.

Keeping a history

Export, download, and commit the file to a git repository (alongside your configuration.yaml, if you keep that in git) whenever you've made changes worth remembering. The diff then shows exactly what changed: a delay, a message, a new alert.

git add alert-redux.yaml
git commit -m "Garage door: 15-minute delay; add Water Leak"

Restoring, or undoing a change

Import the file with overwrite on: alerts that differ go back to the file's version, identical ones are left alone, and alerts the file doesn't mention are untouched (import never deletes). Always Check (dry run) first: it lists what would be created, updated, and left unchanged.

An alert's kind can't be changed by an import. If you changed an alert's kind since the file was made (by deleting and recreating it), delete it again before importing.

Copying to another instance

Because the file keeps each definition's id, importing it on a second Home Assistant creates the same alerts there, and importing it again later updates them rather than making duplicates. Create the notifier groups (with the same names) first; then change entity IDs that differ, and import.

Writing alerts by hand

You can write a file from scratch, as every recipe in this wiki does: leave out id (a definition then matches the existing alert of the same name, or is new), name groups by name, and write durations as "HH:MM:SS" or seconds. If anything's wrong, the import refuses the whole file and lists every problem, so nothing is ever half-imported.

This is also the quickest way to make many similar alerts that a generator doesn't suit: write one, copy it in the file, change the entity and name, and import them together.

Sharing

An exported alert is easy to share in a forum post or an issue: it's short, it's readable, and it imports as-is once the reader has changed the entity IDs. If you've made something good, consider adding it to this wiki.