core: Camera.record service not working with entity_id.name in template, says entity_id is undefined

Until this is fixed, you can do something like this:

service: camera.snapshot
data:
  filename: /media/{{ '{{ entity_id.entity_id }}' }}/{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.jpg
target:
  entity_id:
    - camera.backyard_camera
    - camera.doorbell_camera

Notice the {{ '{{ entity_id.entity_id }}' }} in the filename string. The service helper template will first render the entire filename as /media/{{ entity_id.entity_id }}/20220818-163758.jpg and pass it on to the camera service (snapshot/record), which will then render appropriately as /media/camera.backyard_camera/20220818-163758.jpg and /media/camera.doorbell_camera/20220818-163758.jpg, etc.

Until this is fixed, you can do something like this:

service: camera.snapshot
data:
  filename: /media/{{ '{{ entity_id.entity_id }}' }}/{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.jpg
target:
  entity_id:
    - camera.backyard_camera
    - camera.doorbell_camera

Notice the {{ '{{ entity_id.entity_id }}' }} in the filename string. The service helper template will first render the entire filename as /media/{{ entity_id.entity_id }}/20220818-163758.jpg and pass it on to the camera service (snapshot/record), which will then render appropriately as /media/camera.backyard_camera/20220818-163758.jpg and /media/camera.doorbell_camera/20220818-163758.jpg, etc.

It’s kind of rooted in an architectural issue. The templates in the service call are now evaluated before the service calls are sent. The service calls are then sent to multiple entities at once. Unfortunately, this specifically breaks rendering things that are entity related when sending to multiple entities. Any fix would just be doing what the workaround is doing - i.e., passing the entity_id templates through unrendered. Making a PR to do this still makes sense, as it avoids the service handlers from having to process the templates themselves. See https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/75693#issuecomment-1194182822 I suggest using the above workaround method for now.

I think what some of us are trying to do is:

service: camera.record
entity_id:
  - camera.one
  - camera.two
  - camera.three
data:
  duration: 30
  filename: "{{ entity_id.friendly_name }} - {{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.mp4"

in order to create three simultaneous recordings, one per camera. There is also the possibility people are trying to access other attributes on the entity. Whilst @thrust15 looked to be using a single entity, it’s all part of the same problem — the templating which used to allow this has been broken.

Hardcoding the filename (i.e. not using entity_id at all and just typing the name yourself) has been suggested several times, and will work if you’re recording a single camera, and know everything about it. Anyone planning to suggest hardcoding again, please consider the use-cases where that information isn’t available ahead of time (i.e. with multiple entities, or dynamic attributes); this seems to be the original intent of the templating feature.

It’s also possibly worth pointing out the canonical example of the camera.record service remains “broken” (that is, it’ll give you an error if you run the example). If this issue isn’t likely to be resolved, a “quick win” might be updating the docs not to reference templating, so as not to confuse new users.

I think I just figured out the proper workaround.

The issue is not that ‘entity_id’ needs to be defined on the parent definition, but rather that the ‘filename’ template compilation runs into undefined error when looking for the reference ‘entity_id’.

So to workaround this issue, you just need to remove the reference to ‘entity_id’ in the ‘filename’ template, and hardcode it.

  - trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.main_door
      to: 'on'
    action:
      - service: camera.record
        entity_id: camera.hall
        data:
          entity_id: camera.hall
          filename: '/tmp/hall_{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.mp4'
          duration: 8

Unfortunately still an issue in 2022.04-6.

My use case is that I want all my cameras to take a snapshot with the entity_id as the name and send that to me.

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I’ll try to fix this.

2023.9.3: Still experiencing this when attempting to create a snapshot as documented at https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/camera/#service-snapshot.

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/40241#issuecomment-1233073391 workaround worked for me.

Sorry, my PR to fix it was rejected. I can have another look at it later but it won’t be in time for 2022.8.

@mcoms that’s a lot clearer, thanks for that. This should help the justification to get this fixed/working.