External Components¶

You can easily import community or personal components using the external components feature. Bundled components can be overridden using this feature.

You can find some basic documentation on creating your own components at Contributing to ESPHome.

external_components:
  # use rtttl and dfplayer from ESPHome's dev branch in GitHub
  - source:
      type: git
      url: https://github.com/esphome/esphome
      ref: dev
    components: [ rtttl, dfplayer ]

  # equivalent shorthand for GitHub
  - source: github://esphome/esphome@dev
    components: [ rtttl ]

  # equivalent shorthand for GitHub pull request
  - source: github://pr#2639
    components: [ rtttl ]

  # use all components from a local folder
  - source:
      type: local
      path: my_components

  # use a component from a local git repository
  - source:
      type: git
      url: file:///Users/user/path_to_repo
      ref: my_awesome_branch
    components: [my_awesome_component]

Configuration variables:

source: The location of the components you want to retrieve. See Local and Git.
- type (Required): Repository type. One of local, git.
git options:
- url (Required, url): Git repository url. See Git.
- ref (Optional, string): Git ref (branch or tag). If not specified the default branch is used.
- username (Optional, string): Username for the Git server, if one is required
- password (Optional, string): Password for the Git server, if one is required
- path (Optional, string): Path inside the repo, if different from components or esphome/components
local options:
- path (Required): Path to use when using local components. See Local.
components (Optional, list): The list of components to use from the external source. By default, all available components are used.
refresh (Optional, Time): The interval the source will be checked. Has no effect on local. See Refresh. for more info. Defaults to 1day.

Local¶

You can specify a local path containing external components. This is most useful when developing a component or if you want to manually control the origin of the files.

external_components:
  - source:
      path: /copied_components

# shorthand
external_components:
  - source: my_components

Notice that relative paths are supported, so you can enter my_components as the source path and then ESPHome will load components from a my_components folder in the same folder where your YAML configuration is.

Example of local components¶

Given the above example of my_components, the folder structure must look like:

<CONFIG_DIR>
├── node1.yaml
├── node2.yaml
└── my_components
    ├── my_component1
    │   ├── __init__.py
    │   ├── component1.cpp
    │   ├── component1.h
    │   └── sensor.py
    └── my_component2
        ├── __init__.py
        ├── component2.cpp
        ├── component2.h
        └── switch.py

Git¶

Retrieving components from git is the easiest way to use components not included in ESPHome by default. The source components should be inside a components folder or inside an esphome/components folder. The latter makes sharing a component from a forked ESPHome repository easier.

The url to the repository may be remote (http: or https: scheme) or local (file: scheme with an absolute path.)

Example of git repositories¶

For repositories where you share one or a few components:

components
├── my_component1
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── component1.cpp
│   ├── component1.h
│   └── sensor.py
└── my_component2
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── component2.cpp
    ├── component2.h
    └── switch.py
example_component1.yaml        <- not required but recommended
README.md

or, this structure is also supported, which makes handy to share components from a forked ESPHome repository:

esphome
├── components
│   ├── my_component1
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── component1.cpp
│   │   ├── component1.h
│   │   └── sensor.py
│   ├── my_component2
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── component2.cpp
│   │   ├── component2.h
│   │   └── switch.py
│  ...
...

HTTP git repositories in general are supported with this configuration:

external_components:
  source:
    type: git
    url: http://repository_url/
    ref: branch_or_tag
  source:
    type: git
    url: file:///Users/user/path_to_repo
    ref: branch_or_tag

The source field accepts a short hand github:// resource:

external_components:
  # shorthand
  source: github://<user or org>/<repository name>[@<branch or tag>]

The source field also accepts a short hand github:// pull request from the ESPHome repository:

external_components:
  # shorthand
  source: github://pr#<number>

Under the hood, during validation, ESPHome will clone the git repository into the hidden .esphome folder and components will then be loaded from this local copy. The local path of the cloned repository varies per repository name and ref name, so repositories with different refs are considered different repositories and updated independently.

If required, you can supply a username and password to use when authenticating with the remote git server using the username and password fields. This is most useful when combined with the !secret feature, to load the values in from a secrets.yaml file. This is not a comprehensive security measure; your username and password will necessarily be stored in clear text within the .esphome directory.

Refresh¶

Components are initially cloned into a cache directory, then the repository is checked for updates (via git pull) after the refresh: time passes since last check.

You can make ESPHome check the repository every time by setting this option to 0s, however since ESPHome is validating the configuration continuously while using the dashboard or the vscode extension, it is not recommended to set this value to less than a few minutes to avoid validation slow down and excessive repository checks.

Likewise, you can set this setting to never and ESPHome will never update the repository, useful e.g. when ref points to a tag.

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