home-assistant.io/source/_integrations/recorder.markdown

title, description, ha_category, ha_release, ha_quality_scale, ha_domain

title	description	ha_category	ha_release	ha_quality_scale	ha_domain
Recorder	Instructions on how to configure the data recorder for Home Assistant.	History	pre 0.7	internal	recorder

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

This integration constantly saves data. If you use the default configuration, the data will be saved on the media Home Assistant is installed on. In case of Raspberry Pi with an SD card, it might affect your system's reaction time and life expectancy of the storage medium (the SD card). It is therefore recommended to store the data elsewhere (e.g., another system) or limit the amount of stored data (e.g., by excluding devices).

Home Assistant 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 Home Assistant configuration directory ('/config/') and is named home-assistant_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:

{% configuration %} recorder: description: Enables the recorder integration. Only allowed once. required: true type: map keys: db_url: description: The URL that points to your database. required: false type: string db_max_retries: description: The max amount of times, the recorder retries to connect to the database. required: false default: 10 type: integer db_retry_wait: description: The time in seconds, that the recorder sleeps when trying to connect to the database. required: false default: 3 type: integer auto_purge: description: Automatically purge the database every night at 04:12 local time. Purging keeps the database from growing indefinitely, which takes up disk space and can make Home Assistant slow. If you disable auto_purge it is recommended that you create an automation to call the recorder.purge periodically. required: false default: true type: boolean purge_keep_days: description: Specify the number of history days to keep in recorder database after a purge. required: false default: 10 type: integer commit_interval: description: How often (in seconds) the events and state changes are committed to the database. The default of 1 allows events to be committed almost right away without trashing the disk when an event storm happens. Increasing this will reduce disk I/O and may prolong disk (SD card) lifetime with the trade-off being that the logbook and history will lag. If this is set to 0 (zero), commit are made as soon as possible after an event is processed. required: false default: 1 type: integer exclude: description: Configure which integrations should be excluded from recordings. (Configure Filter) required: false type: map keys: domains: description: The list of domains to be excluded from recordings. required: false type: list entity_globs: description: Exclude all entities matching a listed pattern from recordings (e.g., sensor.weather_*). required: false type: list entities: description: The list of entity ids to be excluded from recordings. required: false type: list event_types: description: The list of event types to be excluded from recordings. required: false type: list include: description: Configure which integrations should be included in recordings. If set, all other entities will not be recorded. (Configure Filter) required: false type: map keys: domains: description: The list of domains to be included in the recordings. required: false type: list entity_globs: description: Include all entities matching a listed pattern from recordings (e.g., sensor.weather_*). required: false type: list entities: description: The list of entity ids to be included in the recordings. required: false type: list {% endconfiguration %}

Configure Filter

By default, no entity will be excluded. To limit which entities are being exposed to Recorder, you can use the include and exclude parameters.

{% raw %}

# Example filter to include specified domains and exclude specified entities
recorder:
  include:
    domains:
      - alarm_control_panel
      - light
    entity_globs:
      - binary_sensor.*_occupancy
  exclude:
    entities:
      - light.kitchen_light

{% endraw %}

Filters are applied as follows:

1. No includes or excludes - pass all entities
2. Includes, no excludes - only include specified entities
3. Excludes, no includes - only exclude specified entities
4. Both includes and excludes:
   • Include domain and/or glob patterns specified
     • If domain is included, and entity not excluded or match exclude glob pattern, pass
     • If entity matches include glob pattern, and entity does not match any exclude criteria (domain, glob pattern or listed), pass
     • If domain is not included, glob pattern does not match, and entity not included, fail
   • Exclude domain and/or glob patterns specified and include does not list domains or glob patterns
     • If domain is excluded and entity not included, fail
     • If entity matches exclude glob pattern and entity not included, fail
     • If entity does not match any exclude criteria (domain, glob pattern or listed), pass
   • Neither include or exclude specifies domains or glob patterns
     • If entity is included, pass (as #2 above)
     • If entity include and exclude, the entity exclude is ignored

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).

Common filtering examples

Defining domains and entities to exclude (i.e. blacklist) is convenient when you are basically happy with the information recorded, but just want to remove some entities or domains.

# Example configuration.yaml entry with exclude
recorder:
  purge_keep_days: 5
  db_url: sqlite:////home/user/.homeassistant/test
  exclude:
    domains:
      - automation
      - updater
    entity_globs:
      - sensor.weather_*
    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

Defining domains and entities to record by using the include configuration (i.e. 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
    entity_globs:
      - sensor.weather_*

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. Note that purging will not immediately decrease disk space usage but it will significantly slow down further growth.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
keep_days	yes	The number of history days to keep in recorder database (defaults to the integration purge_keep_days configuration)
repack	yes	When using SQLite or PostgreSQL this will rewrite the entire database. When using MySQL or MariaDB it will optimize or recreate the events and states tables. This is a heavy operation that can cause slowdowns and increased disk space usage while it runs. Only supported by SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB.

Custom database engines

Database engine	db_url
SQLite	sqlite:////PATH/TO/DB_NAME
MariaDB (omit pymysql)	mysql://user:password@SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8
MySQL	mysql://SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8
MySQL	mysql://user:password@SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8
MariaDB	mysql+pymysql://SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8
MariaDB	mysql+pymysql://user:password@SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8
PostgreSQL	postgresql://SERVER_IP/DB_NAME
PostgreSQL	postgresql://user:password@SERVER_IP/DB_NAME
PostgreSQL (Socket)	postgresql://@/DB_NAME
PostgreSQL (Custom socket dir)	postgresql://@/DB_NAME?host=/path/to/dir
MS SQL Server	mssql+pyodbc://username:password@SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8;DRIVER={DRIVER};Port=1433;

Some installations of MariaDB/MySQL may require an ALTERNATE_PORT (3rd-party hosting providers or parallel installations) to be added to the SERVER_IP, e.g., mysql://user:password@SERVER_IP:ALTERNATE_PORT/DB_NAME?charset=utf8.

When using a MariaDB or MySQL server, adding +pymysql to the URL will use the pure Python MySQL library, which is slower but may be required if the C MySQL library is not available.

When using the official Docker image, the C MySQL library will always be available. pymysql is most commonly used with venv where the C MySQL library is not installed.

Unix Socket connections always bring performance advantages over TCP, if the database is on the same host as the recorder instance (i.e., localhost).

If you want to use Unix Sockets for PostgreSQL you need to modify the pg_hba.conf. See PostgreSQL

If you are using the default FULL recovery model for MS SQL Server you will need to manually backup your log file to prevent your transaction log from growing too large. It is recommended you change the recovery model to SIMPLE unless you are worried about data loss between backups.

Database startup

If you are running a database server instance on the same server as Home Assistant then you must ensure that this service starts before Home Assistant. 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/home-assistant@homeassistant.service

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

[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
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@homeassistant:~ $ sudo -u homeassistant -H -s
homeassistant@homeassistant:~$ source /srv/homeassistant/bin/activate
(homeassistant) homeassistant@homeassistant:~$ 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, Home Assistant 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 Home Assistant 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 Home Assistant 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 homeassistant -H -s
source /srv/homeassistant/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. Instructions for installing the Microsoft ODBC drivers can be found here.

If you are using Hass.io, FreeTDS is already installed for you. The db_url you need to use is mssql+pyodbc://username:password@SERVER_IP/DB_NAME?charset=utf8;DRIVER={FreeTDS};Port=1433;.