How to determine what capabilities are available?

[JasonBSteele]

I recently wrote my first SmartApp GroveStreams SmartApp and found that I had to include a lot of capabilities in the preferences just in case the user has them - whether s/he has them or not.

Is there a way of querying which capabilities are available for the location?

[jody.albritton (Jody)]

Have you seen this? Near the end someone is showing off a smart app that displays capabilities.

I can't seem to find enough API information

You can also use device.currentValue(attribute) where attribute is one of the attributes you identified. This is from Docs > Reference Material > Class Definitions > Device if (!device) { log.debug "Device not found" } else { log.debug "device attributes ${device.supportedAttributes}" log.debug "device switch value ${device.currentValue("switch")}" } You can also use device.currentState(attribute) then access one of the properties of the state class. For example: def state = device.currentState("switch") log.debug "time: ${state.date} value: ${state.value}"

[JasonBSteele]

Thanks @jody.albritton that looks great for finding the capabilities of a specific device, but what I am really after is the capabilities available across devices at a Location.

I want to only present as inputs those capabilities available so that the user doesn’t have to page through a load that aren’t relevant to them.

I can’t find a way of enumerating Devices or Capabilities that are available.

[jody.albritton (Jody)]

I don’t know if there is an easier way, but I would create an array of devices for the location. Then, loop through that array and display the capabilities using a method similar to the one above.

[JasonBSteele]

@jody.albritton

I would create an array of devices for the location

Hi Jody, excuse my complete noobness but how would I do that? I rather hopefully tried to output “devices”:

preferences {
    page name: "displayDevices"
}

def displayDevices() {
	def pageProperties = [
    	name: "displayDevices",
		title: "Display devices",
        install: true,
		uninstall: false
    ]
    
    
    return dynamicPage(pageProperties) {
		section("Devices") {
        	paragraph "${devices}"
		}
	}
}

but just got “null”.

Thanks

[psfunatyo (Paul)]

@JasonBSteele

I want to only present as inputs those capabilities available so that the user doesn’t have to page through a load that aren’t relevant to them.

I can’t find a way of enumerating Devices or Capabilities that are available.

If I understand the following post correctly, that is not possible. I have not seen the API which would allow to do what you are looking for.

@Tyler

The SmartApps are sandboxed in such a way that they only have access to the devices that the user authorizes. There’s no way to discover and automatically use devices without the user interacting with the SmartApp installation screen.

[JasonBSteele]

Thanks @psfunatyo that’s a shame. I think I should at least be able to enumerate them within the app, even if I can’t interact with them. After all, when you prompt for capabilities the devices with those capabilities are listed, so being able to ask what capabilities a location has would seem reasonable.

[jody.albritton (Jody)]

With ST you are able to build your own API. You should take a look at some of the api endpoint examples. You could configure a smartapp api endpoint that would allow users to authorize their devices, and then you could enumerate the capabilities of all authorized devices.

[JasonBSteele]

Thanks @jodypeterson, yes I guess going through the OAuth process would list the available devices. I was hoping to do it within the SmartApp though and can’t really see a good reason why this wouldn’t be supported.