Attribute

An Attribute represents specific information about the state of a device. For example, the “Temperature Measurement” capability has an attribute named “temperature” that represents the temperature data.

The Attribute object contains metadata information about the Attribute itself - its name, data type, and possible values.

You will typically interact with Attributes values directly, for example, using the current<Uppercase attribute name> method on a Device instance. That will get the value of the Attribute, which is typically what SmartApps are most interested in.

You can get the supported Attributes of a Device through the Device’s supportedAttributes method.

Warning

Referring to an Attribute directly from a Device by calling someDevice.attributeName will return an Attribute object with only the name property available. This is available for legacy purposes only, and will likely be removed at some time.

To get a reference to an Attribute object, you should use the supportedAttributes method on the Device object, and then find the desired Attribute in the returned List.

You can view the available attributes for all Capabilities in our Capabilities Reference.

---

dataType

Gets the data type of this Attribute.

Signature:

String dataType

Returns:

String - the data type of this Attribute. Possible types are “STRING”, “NUMBER”, “VECTOR3”, “ENUM”.

Example:

preferences {
    section() {
        input "thetemp", "capbility.temperatureMeasurement"
    }
}
...
def attrs = thetemp.supportedAttributes
attrs.each {
    log.debug "${thetemp.displayName}, attribute ${it.name}, dataType: ${it.dataType}"
}
...

name

The name of the Attribute.

Signature:

String name

Returns:

String - the name of this attribute

Example:

preferences {
    section() {
        input "myswitch", "capability.switch"
    }
}
...
// switch capability has an attribute named "switch"
def switchAttr = myswitch.switch
log.debug "switch attribute name: ${switchAttr.name}"
...

---

values

The possible values for this Attribute, if the data type is “ENUM”.

Signature:

List<String> values

Returns:

List < String > - the possible values for this Attribute, if the data type is “ENUM”. An empty list is returned if there are no possible values or if the data type is not “ENUM”.

Example:

preferences {
    section() {
        input "thetemp", "capbility.temperatureMeasurement"
    }
}
...
def attrs = thetemp.supportedAttributes
attrs.each {
    log.debug "${thetemp.displayName}, attribute ${it.name}, values: ${it.values}
    log.debug "${thetemp.displayName}, attribute ${it.name}, dataType: ${it.dataType}"
}
...

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