openhab-docs/concepts/things.md

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Things

Things are the entities that can physically be added to a system and which can potentially provide many functionalities in one. It is important to note that things do not have to be devices, but they can also represent a web service or any other manageable source of information and functionality. From a user perspective, they are relevant for the setup and configuration process, but not for the operation.

Things can have configuration properties, which can be optional or mandatory. Such properties can be basic information like an IP address, an access token for a web service or a device specific configuration that alters its behavior.

Things provide "channels", which represent the different functions they provide. Channels are linked to items, where such links are the glue between the virtual and the physical layer. Once such a link is established, a thing reacts on events sent for an item that is linked to one of its channels. Likewise, it actively sends out events for items linked to its channels.

A special type of thing is a "bridge". Bridges are things that need to be added to the system in order to gain access to other things. A typical example of a bridge is an IP gateway for some non-IP based home automation system.

As many things can be automatically discovered, there are special mechanisms available that deal with the handling of automatically discovered things.

Thing Status

Each thing has a status object, which helps to identify possible problems with the device or service. The following table provides an overview of the different statuses:

Status	Description
UNINITIALIZED	This is the initial status of a thing, when it is added or the framework is being started. This status is also assigned, if the initializing process failed or the binding is not available. Commands, which are sent to channels will not be processed.
INITIALIZING	This state is assigned while the binding initializes the thing. It depends on the binding how long the initializing process takes. Commands, which are sent to channels will not be processed.
ONLINE	The device/service represented by a thing is assumed to be working correctly and can process commands.
OFFLINE	The device/service represented by a thing is assumed to be not working correctly and may not process commands. But the framework is allowed to send commands, because some radio-based devices may go back to ONLINE, if a command is sent to them.
REMOVING	The device/service represented by a thing should be removed, but the binding did not confirm the deletion yet. Some bindings need to communicate with the device to unpair it from the system. Thing is probably not working and commands can not be processed.
REMOVED	This status indicates, that the device/service represented by a thing was removed from the external system. Usually this status is an intermediate status, because the thing is removed from the database after this status is assigned.

The statuses UNINITIALIZED, INITIALIZING and REMOVING are set by the framework, where as the statuses ONLINE, OFFLINE and REMOVED is assigned from a binding.

Status Transitions

The following diagram shows the allowed status transitions:

The initial state of a thing is UNINITIALIZED. From UNINITIALIZED the thing goes into INITIALIZING. If the initialization fails, the thing goes back to UNINITIALIZED. If the initialization succeeds, the binding sets the status of the thing to ONLINE or OFFLINE, which both means, that the thing is INITIALIZED. From one of this states the thing can go back into UNINITIALIZED, REMOVING or REMOVED. The statuses REMOVING and REMOVED can also be reached from any other state.

Status Details

A status is detailed further with a status detail object. The following table lists the different status details for each status:

UNINITIALIZED	NONE	No further status details available.
	HANDLER_MISSING_ERROR	The handler cannot be initialized, because the responsible binding is not available or started.
	HANDLER_REGISTERING_ERROR	The handler failed in the service registration phase.
	HANDLER_CONFIGURATION_PENDING	The handler is registered but can not be initialized caused by missing configuration parameters.
	HANDLER_INITIALIZING_ERROR	The handler failed in the initialization phase.
INITIALIZING	NONE	No further status details available.
ONLINE	NONE	No further status details available.
	CONFIGURATION_PENDING	The thing is waiting to transfer configuration information to a device. Some bindings need to communicate with the device to make sure the configuration is accepted.
OFFLINE	NONE	No further status details available.
	COMMUNICATION_ERROR	Error in communication with the device. This may also be only a temporary error.
	CONFIGURATION_ERROR	An issue with the configuration of a thing prevents the communication with the represented device or service. This issue might be solved by reconfiguring the thing.
	BRIDGE_OFFLINE	Assuming the thing to be offline because the corresponding bridge is offline.
	FIRMWARE_UPDATING	The thing is currently operating a firmware update.
	DUTY_CYCLE	The thing is currently in DUTY_CYCLE state, which means it is blocked for further usage.
REMOVING	NONE	No further status details available.
REMOVED	NONE	No further status details available.

Status Description

To provide additional information about the current status a description is used. The status description is to be specified by the binding. This description can be used for debugging purposes and should not be presented to the user, as it might contain unreadable technical information (e.g. an HTTP status code, or any other protocol specific information, which helps to identify the current problem).

Thing Status API

The Thing interface defines a method getStatusInfo() to retrieve the current status of the thing. The following code shows how to print the status of each thing into the console:

Collection<Thing> things = thingRegistry.getAll();
for (Thing thing : things) {
    ThingStatusInfo statusInfo = thing.getStatusInfo();
    switch (statusInfo.getStatus()) {
        case ONLINE:
            System.out.println("Thing is online");
            break;
        case OFFLINE:
            System.out.println("Thing is offline");
            break;
        default:
            System.out.println("Thing is in state " + statusInfo.getStatus());
            break;
    }
    System.out.println("Thing status detail: " + statusInfo.getStatusDetail());
    System.out.println("Thing status description: " + statusInfo.getDescription());
}