[Solved] Multiple items on a display line, Rules, postUpdate

[papa]

User Interface (UI) screen real-estate can get crowded & our mouths start watering at posts offering Multiple Items on a Line.

I tried some of those & they did not work for me due to some errors & perhaps OpenHAB changes or differences on operating systems.

On Windows, I had adapted the Humidex rule to Fahrenheit & it had worked & I believe still works (I'm watching it from a distance)

However, on Linux, the Humidex rule was not working, not even showing an error.

   I believe I learned:  (At least for Linux,) don't use quotes or spaces in rule names (?).
        This much got me one rule using postUpdate that worked.

Next the elements for combining Weather Temp & Weather Humidity on the same UI line.

Added on 2/15/2016:  The following items get weather info for Santa Clara, CA (w=2488836 below).  For your town, put your location in the input box at weather.yahoo.com.  See the number that appears at the end of the internet address box.  Use that number instead of 2488836 in the items below.  For example, for Omaha, NE, use w=2465512.

        Items  (for Santa Clara, CA whose Yahoo Weather woeid is 2488836)
Number Weather_Temperature "Outside Temperature [%.1f °F]" <temperature> (Weather_Chart) { http="<[http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=2488836&u=f:60000:XSLT(yahoo_weather_temperature.xsl)]" }
Number Weather_Humidity "Outside Humidity [%.1f %%]" <humidity> (Weather) { http="<[http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=2488836&u=f:60000:XSLT(yahoo_weather_humidity.xsl)]" }
String Climate_Out "Climate Outside [%s]" <comfort_level> (Weather)

    Rules:
rule Ext_Climate
    when
        Weather_Temperature changed or
        Weather_Humidity changed or
        Time cron "0 */2 * * * ?"
    then
        var Number HumiW = Weather_Humidity.state
        var Number TempW = Weather_Temperature.state
        var Number HumiW_r = (Math::round(HumiW.floatValue))
        var Number TempW_r = (Math::round(TempW.floatValue * 10.0 ) /10.0)
        Climate_Out.postUpdate(TempW_r + "°F... " + HumiW_r + "%")
end

    Sitemap:
Text item=Climate_Out valuecolor=["green"]

                Notes:
    Config elements already included in openhab-papa.zip: the top two items.
New (& not yet in the zip file): the Climate_Out item, the Ext_Climate rule, & the sitemap entry.

The top two items get the Weather Temp & Humidity for w=2488836, namely Santa Clara, CA.  For your location code, go to weather.yahoo.com, enter your town name & get the number that appears at the end of the internet address.
    u=f for fahrenheit & related measures.  Change that to u=c for Celsius related measures.

Using postUpdate, the last item will receive the combination of the top two items.

The rule is triggered when the state of either top item changes or every 2 minutes (a frequency you can change)
    The rule massages & then with postUpdate combines the top two items states with each other & explanatory labels.

The sitemap entry displays the combined item states in green text.

At present, it seems these two versions of postUpdate will both work:
    postUpdate(Climate_Out,TempW_r + "°F... " + HumiW_r + "%")
    Climate_Out.postUpdate(TempW_r + "°F... " + HumiW_r + "%")

Probably because more is involved (including the finding & parsing of a rule), displaying a line of combined item states seems to take a bit longer than displaying the separate item states
     Seems an ok trade for more efficiently using the screen.

Again about rule names, it currently seems to me that OpenHAB (1.8.1) (at least on Linux) ignores rules whose names have quotes or spaces
       Whereas, names like Ext_Climate work.
    

[papa]

When putting the states of more than one item on a display line,
it's a little different if a transformation could improve output of a state. Here's an example of that.

      The following items get weather info for Santa Clara, CA (w=2488836 below). For your town, put your location in the input box at weather.yahoo.com. See the number that appears at the end of the internet address box. Use that number instead of 2488836 in the items below. For example, for Omaha, NE, use w=2465512. 

The first item's /configurations/transform/yahoo_weather_wind_speed.xsl comes with the OpenHAB install.  For the second item's transform file, copy /configurations/transform/yahoo_weather_wind_speed.xsl to a new file /configurations/transform/yahoo_weather_wind_direction.xsl.  With editing & writing permissions,
    open /configurations/transform/yahoo_weather_wind_speed.xsl & find <xsl:value-of select="//yweather:wind/@speed" />
          Replace the found line with
<xsl:value-of select="//yweather:wind/@direction" />
        Save the file.

Using the approach just above & the info here, you can add & refine yahoo weather transformation files for the /configurations/transform folder.

        /configurations/items (for Santa Clara, CA whose Yahoo Weather woeid is 2488836)
Number Weather_Wind_Speed "Wind Speed [%.0f MPH]" <wind_vane> (Weather_Chart) { http="<[http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=2488836&u=f:60000:XSLT(yahoo_weather_wind_speed.xsl)]" }
Number Weather_Wind_Direction "Wind Direction [SCALE(compass.scale):%s]" <wind_vane> (Weather_Chart) { http="<[http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=2488836&u=f:60000:XSLT(yahoo_weather_wind_direction.xsl)]" }

For the two items just above, their state could be reported on individual sitemap lines like these:
    Text item=Weather_Wind_Speed
    Text item=Weather_Wind_Direction

The yahooapis rss site provides the wind direction in degrees, not a compass direction.  Using the /configurations/transform/compass.scale file (contents shown below), the transform translates the number into a compass abbreviation, like SE for South East.

      <<  Here's the Wind_Vane.png image for the sitemap display.
Put it in the Windows folder /configurations/webapps/images or the Linux folder /usr/share/openhab/webapps/images

=====================

Putting info from both items (including the transform) on one line uses the screen more efficiently.

Here's the configs for that:

Notes: The first two items just below are the "sources," which are transformed & combined (by the rule) into the third item.  In the rule, Time cron "0 0/2 * * * ?" ensures the combined item will update at least every 2 minutes.  Otherwise, one might wait until the hourly yahoo weather rss feed updates Wind Speed or Direction.  The rules uses transform("SCALE", "compass.scale", Vector)  << Here the variable located at Vector's position must be a string. Vector is compared to the bracketed contents of compass.scale.  When the Wind Direction state falls between two numbers of a bracketed pair, it generates the compass abbreviation after the equal sign.  For example, if yahoo weather reports a wind direction of 180 (degrees), then S for South is generated.  The compass.scale data was based on this.

     /configurations/items
Number Weather_Wind_Speed "Wind Speed [%.0f MPH]"  (Weather_Chart) { http="<[http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=2488836&u=f:60000:XSLT(yahoo_weather_wind_speed.xsl)]" }
Number Weather_Wind_Direction "Wind Direction [%s]"  (Weather_Chart) { http="<[http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=2488836&u=f:60000:XSLT(yahoo_weather_wind_direction.xsl)]" }
String Wind_Data "Wind [%s]" <wind_vane>

     /configurations/rules
rule Wind_Condition
when
Item Weather_Wind_Speed changed or
Item Weather_Wind_Direction changed or
Time cron "0 0/2 * * * ?"
then
var Number Speed = Weather_Wind_Speed.state
var String Vector = Weather_Wind_Direction.state.toString
Wind_Data.postUpdate(Speed + " MPH, " + transform("SCALE", "compass.scale", Vector))
end

    Create & save the new file  /configurations/transform/compass.scale        with the following contents:
-=pending
[348,360]=N
[0,12]=N
[13,32]=NNE
[33,57]=NE
[58,77]=ENE
[78,102]=E
[103,122]=ESE
[123,147]=SE
[148,167]=SSE
[168,192]=S
[193,212]=SSW
[213,237]=SW
[238,257]=WSW
[258,282]=W
[283,302]=WNW
[303,327]=NW
[328,347]=NNW

     /configurations/sitemaps
Text item=Wind_Data

[papa]

Here are some User Interface pics showing how I combined 2 or 3 yahoo weather data on one line.
     Click on the pics for a larger view.

           

[papa]

The weather data displayed in above posts used the http binding & Yahoo Weather (which stopped working for me.)

In my new thread, Display Weather Info on OpenHAB’s User Interface, I revisit displaying weather info now using the OpenHAB Weather Binding & displaying multiple items on one line of the OpenHAB User Interface.

Added 5/27/2017: This thread gives another example of combining multiple weather items (prediction info) into one item displayed on the User Interface. It also demonstrates troubleshooting an error that arose with this.