Recorder

The recorder component is storing details in a database which then are handled by the history component.

Home Assistant uses SQLAlchemy as Object Relational Mapper (ORM). This means that you can now use any SQL backend for the recorder that is supported by SQLAlchemy, like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or MS SQL Server.

The default database engine is SQLite which doesn’t require any configuration. The database is stored in your Home Assistant configuration directory (.homeassistant) and called home-assistant_v2.db.

To setup the recorder component in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
recorder:

Configuration variables:

• purge_days (Optional): Delete events and states older than x days. The purge task runs every 2 days, starting from when Home Assistant is started if you restart your instance more frequently than the purge will never take place.
• exclude (Optional): Configure which components should be excluded from recordings.
  • entities (Optional): The list of entity ids to be excluded from recordings.
  • domains (Optional): The list of domains to be excluded from recordings.
• include (Optional): Configure which components should be included in recordings. If set, all other entities will not be recorded.
  • entities (Optional): The list of entity ids to be included from recordings.
  • domains (Optional): The list of domains to be included from recordings.
• db_url (Optional): The URL which point to your database.

Define domains and entities to exclude (aka. blacklist). This is convenient when you are basically happy with the information recorded, but just want to remove some entities or domains. Usually these are entities/domains which do not change (like weblink) or rarely change (updater or automation).

# Example configuration.yaml entry with exclude
recorder:
  purge_days: 5
  db_url: sqlite:///home/user/.homeassistant/test
  exclude:
    domains:
      - automation
      - weblink
      - updater
    entities:
      - sun.sun   # Don't record sun data
      - sensor.last_boot
      - sensor.date

Define domains and entities to record by using the include configuration (aka. whitelist). If you have a lot of entities in your system and your exclude lists possibly get very large, it might be better just to define the entities or domains to record.

# Example configuration.yaml entry with include
recorder:
  include:
    domains:
      - sensor
      - switch
      - media_player

Use the include list to define the domains/entities to record, and exclude some of them with in the exclude list. This makes sense if you for instance include the sensor domain, but want to exclude some specific sensors. Instead of adding every sensor entity to the include entities list just include the sensor domain and exclude the sensor entities you are not interested in.

# Example configuration.yaml entry with include and exclude
recorder:
  include:
    domains:
      - sensor
      - switch
      - media_player
  exclude:
    entities:
     - sensor.last_boot
     - sensor.date

If you only want to hide events from e.g. your history, take a look at the history component. Same goes for logbook. But if you have privacy concerns about certain events or neither want them in history or logbook, you should use the exclude/include options of the recorder component, that they aren’t even in your database. That way you can save storage and keep the database small by excluding certain often-logged events (like sensor.last_boot).

Custom database engines

Installation notes

Not all Python bindings for the chosen database engine can be installed directly. This section contains additional details which should help you to get it working.

MySQL

For MySQL you may have to install a few dependencies. You can choose between pymysql and mysqlclient:

$ sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
$ pip3 install mysqlclient

If you are in a virtual environment, don’t forget to activate it before installing the pymysql package.

pi@homeassistant:~ $ sudo -i
root@homeassistant:~# su homeassistant
homeassistant@homeassistant:/root$ cd /srv/homeassistant/homeassistant_venv/
homeassistant@homeassistant:/srv/homeassistant/homeassistant_venv$ source bin/activate
(homeassistant_venv) homeassistant@homeassistant:/srv/homeassistant/homeassistant_venv$ pip3 install mysqlclient

After installing the dependencies, it is required to create the database manually. During the startup, Home Assistant will look for the database specified in the db_url. If the database doesn’t exist, it will not automatically create it for you.

Once Home Assistant finds the database, with right level of permissions, all the required tables will then be automatically created and the data will be populated accordingly.

PostgreSQL

For PostgreSQL you may have to install a few dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-X.Y
$ pip3 install psycopg2

MS SQL Server

For MS SQL Server you may have to install a few dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install freetds-dev
$ pip3 install pymssql

If you are in a virtual environment, don’t forget to activate it before installing the pymssql package.

$ sudo su -s /bin/bash homeassistant
$ source /srv/homeassistant/bin/activate
$ pip3 install pymssql