Recorder

The recorder integration is responsible for storing details in a database, which then are handled by the history integration.

Open Peer Power uses SQLAlchemy, which is an Object Relational Mapper (ORM). This means that you can 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 does not require any configuration. The database is stored in your Open Peer Power configuration directory (‘/config/’) and is named open-peer-power_v2.db.

To change the defaults for the recorder integration in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
recorder:

Defining domains and entities to exclude (aka. blacklist) 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 that do not change or rarely change (like updater or automation).

# Example configuration.yaml entry with exclude
recorder:
  purge_keep_days: 5
  db_url: sqlite:////home/user/.openpeerpower/test
  exclude:
    domains:
      - automation
      - updater
    entities:
      - sun.sun # Don't record sun data
      - sensor.last_boot # Comes from 'systemmonitor' sensor platform
      - sensor.date
    event_types:
      - call_service # Don't record service calls

define domains and entities to record by using the include configuration (aka. whitelist) is convenient if you have a lot of entities in your system and your exclude lists possibly get very large, so 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

You can also use the include list to define the domains/entities to record, and exclude some of those within 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 your history, take a look at the history integration. The same goes for the logbook. But if you have privacy concerns about certain events or want them in neither the history or logbook, you should use the exclude/include options of the recorder integration. That way they aren’t even in your database, you can reduce storage and keep the database small by excluding certain often-logged events (like sensor.last_boot).

Service purge

Call the service recorder.purge to start a purge task which deletes events and states older than x days, according to keep_days service data.

Custom database engines

Database startup

If you are running a database server instance on the same server as Open Peer Power then you must ensure that this service starts before Open Peer Power. For a Linux instance running Systemd (Raspberry Pi, Debian, Ubuntu and others) you should edit the service file. To help facilitate this, db_max_retry and db_retry_wait variables have been added to ensure the recorder retries the connection to your database enough times, for your database to start up.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/open-peer-power@openpeerpower.service

and add the service for the database, for example, PostgreSQL:

[Unit]
Description=Open Peer Power
After=network.target postgresql.service

Save the file then reload systemctl:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Installation notes

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

MariaDB and MySQL

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

pi@openpeerpower:~ $ sudo -u openpeerpower -H -s
openpeerpower@openpeerpower:~$ source /srv/openpeerpower/bin/activate
(openpeerpower) openpeerpower@openpeerpower:~$ pip3 install mysqlclient

For MariaDB you may have to install a few dependencies. If you’re using MariaDB version 10.2, libmariadbclient-dev was renamed to libmariadb-dev. If you’re using MariaDB 10.3, the package libmariadb-dev-compat must also be installed. For MariaDB v10.0.34 only libmariadb-dev-compat is needed. Please install the correct packages based on your MariaDB version.

On the Python side we use the mysqlclient:

sudo apt-get install libmariadbclient-dev libssl-dev
pip3 install mysqlclient

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

sudo apt-get install default-libmysqlclient-dev libssl-dev
pip3 install mysqlclient

After installing the dependencies, it is required to create the database manually. During the startup, Open Peer Power 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 Open Peer Power finds the database, with the 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

For using Unix Sockets, add the following line to your pg_hba.conf:

local DB_NAME USER_NAME peer

Where DB_NAME is the name of your database and USER_NAME is the name of the user running the Open Peer Power instance (see securing your installation).

Reload the PostgreSQL configuration after that:

$ sudo -i -u postgres psql -c "SELECT pg_reload_conf();"
 pg_reload_conf
----------------
 t
(1 row)

A service restart will work as well.

MS SQL Server

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

sudo apt-get install unixodbc-dev
pip3 install pyodbc

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

sudo -u openpeerpower -H -s
source /srv/openpeerpower/bin/activate
pip3 install pyodbc

You will also need to install an ODBC Driver. Microsoft ODBC drivers are recommended, however FreeTDS is available for systems that are not supported by Microsoft. Instrucitons for installing the Microsoft ODBC drivers can be found here.