Support additional fields from Brottsplatskartan API (headline, image, location_string etc.)

[markus-lassfolk]

Integration name

Brottsplatskartan

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/brottsplatskartan/

Describe the enhancement

The Brottsplatskartan integration currently only exposes the count of incidents and a breakdown of incident types. However, the underlying Brottsplatskartan API has been extended with many new useful fields (e.g., headline, image, image_far, content_teaser, location_string, location_string_2, date_human) which are not currently supported by the integration.
I’d like to request that the integration be enhanced to surface these additional fields (for example as attributes or separate sensors) so users can display richer information (e.g., incident headline, teaser and image) inside Home Assistant.

Use cases

Background

• The API updates by Brottsplatskartan state (in Swedish) here #https://brottsplatskartan.se/blogg/2024/uppdatering-api :

  “Flera av API-slutpunkterna har fått både en location_string och en location_string_2 där en händelses plats skriver ut kommaseparerat. … Slutpunkten för händelser nära en plats har fått flera nya nycklar: image_far, headline, date_human. Slutpunkten för en specifik händelser har också fått lite fler: headline, image, image_far, content_teaser.”
  (My summary translation: More fields were added recently for headlines, images, teaser text etc.)

• The current Python library and integration (via brottsplatskartan PyPI package) appears to be built before these API additions (last release 2019) and thus the integration only supports minimal data.

• As a result, from within Home Assistant one currently sees only the number of incidents and no further detail (no headline, no summary, no image) — which limits usability and display options.

Proposal / Requested Enhancement

I propose the following enhancements to the Brottsplatskartan integration:

1. Extend the data model to parse the new API fields:

   • headline (string)
   • content_teaser (string)
   • image and/or image_far (URLs to images)
   • location_string, location_string_2 (text descriptions of location)
   • date_human (human-friendly timestamp)

2. Expose these fields in Home Assistant in a meaningful way:

   • Option A: In existing sensor’s extra_state_attributes, include the above fields for each incident (e.g., as a list of dicts)
   • Option B: Create one or multiple sensors/entities representing the latest incident, exposing e.g. the headline as state, description as attribute, image as attribute.

3. Make sure the fields are optional (since older API responses may not include them) and gracefully degrade if missing.

4. Documentation update: Update the integration’s doc (in homeassistant/components/brottsplatskartan/manifest.json + documentation on home-assistant.io) to indicate the availability of the new fields and how to access them.

Benefits

• Users can build richer dashboards: display headline + image + teaser of the most recent incident rather than just a count.
• Improves the usefulness of the integration for real-time awareness rather than just statistical counts.
• Leverages the fuller API surface that is already available, thus bringing “value for free”.

Considerations / Questions

• Because the API may return many incidents, it may be best to expose only the “latest” or “top N” incidents to avoid large payloads; perhaps allow a configuration option (e.g., max_incidents) to control how many incident records to expose.
• Image handling: Home Assistant supports entity_picture and image URLs in attributes; we should follow best practices for exposing images (e.g., attribute entity_picture: <url>).
• Backward compatibility: Users who only care about counts shouldn’t be impacted; existing behavior (sensor value = count) should remain if not configured for detail.
• Performance: Parsing many incidents + storing large attributes may impact memory; so limit on size or allow user configuration.

Anything else?

No response

[github-actions[bot]]

🏷️ I've automatically added the integration: brottsplatskartan label to help categorize this feature request.