If the **label** is not set when creating a rule, the error message insists on setting a **name**

[dilyanpalauzov]

When I want to “Create rule” and have not set label, I get an error message:

• Either the field “Label” should be renamed to “Name”, or the error message must be “Set label to the rule”. Here label and name mean the same thing, but are different words, and this is confusing.

Besides, I think the name should not be mandatory, openHAB can work with rules without names and the user can later set the name. So it can be left up to the user, if the user wants to set or not a rule name.

I tried to see what happens, when file-based automation creates rules, if the rules have no names set. The Groovy program below creates rules, without setting names. In the UI some of the rules are shown having a number as name and some have no names.

import org.openhab.core.automation.module.script.rulesupport.shared.simple.SimpleRule
import org.openhab.core.config.core.Configuration
import org.openhab.core.automation.*
import org.openhab.core.automation.util.TriggerBuilder;
scriptExtension.importPreset("RuleSupport")

def void addR() {
  automationManager.addRule(new SimpleRule() {
    { // name = "The name could be set here, but is not"
      triggers = [
        TriggerBuilder.create().withId("trig1").withTypeUID("core.ItemStateChangeTrigger")
        .withConfiguration(new Configuration([itemName: "r"])).build()
      ]
    }
    @Override Object execute(Action module, Map<String, ?> inputs) {}
  })
}

for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) addR() // these rules have name not set

for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
  automationManager.addRule(new SimpleRule() {
    {   // these rules have name "2"
      triggers = [
        TriggerBuilder.create().withId("trig1").withTypeUID("core.ItemStateChangeTrigger")
        .withConfiguration(new Configuration([itemName: "r"])).build()
      ]
    }
    @Override Object execute(Action module, Map<String, ?> inputs) {}
  })

automationManager.addRule(new SimpleRule() {
    { // this rule has name "3"
      triggers = [
        TriggerBuilder.create().withId("trig1").withTypeUID("core.ItemStateChangeTrigger")
        .withConfiguration(new Configuration([itemName: "r"])).build()
      ]
    }
    @Override Object execute(Action module, Map<String, ?> inputs) {}
})

addR() //rule has no name

with openHAB 5.1.0 Build 4849.

[rkoshak]

Besides, I think the name should not be mandatory, openHAB can work with rules without names and the user can later set the name. So it can be left up to the user, if the user wants to set or not a rule name.

I disagree, at least for UI created rules. The name/label is the most prominent identifier presented to the user. The Settings Rules page and developer sidebar become nearly useless without supplying meaningful names/labels for the rules and since these rules are created in the UI, that's pretty much the only way to manage them.

The UID is already supplied as a random number (far too few bother to change these to something meaningful) and if we don't require the rules to be named/labeled you end up with (I used "." as the label since it's required):

If you are using files instead of the UI it's no such a big deal. You have other ways to find and manage your rules (e.g. meaningful file names). I think the name/label is already optional in pretty much all the languages when rules are created from files. It makes the UI pretty much unusable, but these users aren't using the UI for rules in the first place.

But for rules created in the UI, the rule name/label should remain required.

I agree that the terminology between the field and the error should be the same though. That definitely needs to be fixed.