openHAB

# Developer Tools - Developer Sidebar

Main UI provides a developer sidebar for administrator user(s), that is accessible from anywhere in the UI. The developer sidebar is split into a "Tools" section with several useful tools including a universal search, a widget expression tester, and a "Help" section aiming at providing help and useful information regarding configuration and setup.

If your device's screen is wide enough (it has to be at least 1280 pixels wide), you can open the developer side-panel by:

  • Opening the Developer Tools page from the menu and enabling the developer sidebar.
  • Clicking on the help icon displayed in the upper right corner of most pages.
  • Pressing the key combination AltShiftD on your keyboard.

The Developer Sidebar provides a powerful, case-insensitive search across nearly all UI-configurable entities in Main UI — including Things, Items, Pages, Rules, Scenes, Scripts, and more.

Instead of manually digging through rules, scenes, scripts, persistence configurations, sitemaps, and pages to find where a string is used, the Developer Sidebar Search lets you locate all entities that contain the string, whether it’s an Item name, label, metadata, uid, or other textual content.

# Search Syntax

The Developer Sidebar supports extended syntax to help fine-tune your search results:

  • Whitespace acts as a logical AND, meaning all separate terms must be present somewhere in the matched content.
  • A single pipe (|) is treated as a logical OR, matching entries that contain any of the terms.
  • Enclose a phrase with double quotes (") to treat it as a single unit and avoid splitting it — useful for partial exact matches.
  • Prefix with an equals sign (=) for full-string matches (still case-insensitive), ensuring the entire field matches the query.
Token Meaning
word Find the word word anywhere within the text.
^word The matching field must begin with word.
word$ The matching field must end with word.
=word Find an exact match (but still case-insensitive). The entire field must be word.

Some examples:

  • living room -> matches Living Room Light, Light in the living Room, Room Living
  • "living room" -> matches Living Room, Living Room1, Living Room Light, My Living Room Light but not Room Living or Living1 Room.
  • ="living room" -> matches only the exact string Living Room.
  • living room | dining room -> matches entries containing either (Living and Room) or (Dining and Room), e.g. My Living Room, Living My Room, My Dining Room. It will not match Living Dining.
  • ^garden -> matches Garden Light, not Light in the Garden or Rose Garden.

# Search Scope

Entities searched include:

  • Things
    • UID, label
  • Items
    • Name, label, tags, metadata
  • Pages and Sitemaps
    • UID, label, content (widgets, tabs, charts, slots)
  • Widgets
    • UID, props, slot content
  • Transformations
    • UID, label, function
  • Rules, Scenes & Scripts
    • UID, name, description, tags
    • Item name & Thing UID of triggers, actions & conditions
    • Script code (Rules DSL, JavaScript, Blockly, etc.)
    • Script MIME type
    • Blockly scripts (using block, blockly or blocksource as search string)
  • Persistence Configurations:
    • Label, Service ID
    • Persisted Items
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