Templates

Frigate-Notify allows for certain configuration values to be customized using Golang text templates. Templates are currently supported on alert titles, alert messages, and HTTP headers.

Alert Templates

Custom message templates can be defined by configuring the template section of any notification provider.

By default, Frigate-Notify includes a few templates that it uses for building notification messages: HTML, Plaintext, Markdown, and JSON. All of these are the same message contents, but formatted differently for different notification providers. As you define your own custom templates, it may be helpful to reference these.

Note

Each notification provider has it's own supported/unsupported formats, so be sure to check before defining a custom template.

If you run into trouble with building a custom template, try enabling debug logging. Once an event is received, this will log a message with the final rendered template.

Custom messages can be created by utilizing variables to fill in details about the event. Any variable can be inserted by using the syntax: {{ .VariableName }}. For example, the name of the camera could be inserted by using: {{ .Camera }}.

When defining a custom template, it can be configured in a single line:

alerts:
  discord:
    enabled: true
    webhook: # Webhook URL
    template: "Looks like {{ .Camera }} spotted a {{ .Label }}!!"

Or it could also be configured as multi-line:

alerts:
  discord:
    enabled: true
    webhook: # Webhook URL
    template: |
        {{ .Camera }} spotted something!
        The camera seems to think it found a {{ .Label }} 🤔

If the template configuration is missing or blank under any notification provider, then the default template will be used.

Warning

If your template starts with a variable - It's recommended to wrap your single-line template in quotes (""), or use the multi-line method. Otherwise, you may get an error loading the config file.

So instead of template: {{ .Camera }} alert!, use template: "{{ .Camera }} alert!"

Title Template

Template variables can also be used to set the alert title or subject line.

As an example, the following title template includes the camera & label information. If the camera front_door detected a dog, then the notification title would be set to: Frigate - front_door detected dog

Config File Snippet

...
alerts:  
  general:
    title: Frigate - {{ .Camera }} detected {{ .Label }}
...

Header Templates

For alert methods that support sending custom HTTP headers, these headers can also be defined using variables using the same syntax as above. This can allow for some interesting custom behaviors. In addition, headers can load data from environment variables for populating sensitive information like Authorization headers.

As an example, below is an example of altering Ntfy notifications based on the event characteristics:

Config File Snippet

...
    headers:
      - Authorization: Basic {{ env.Getenv "FN_NTFY_AUTH_BASIC" }}
      - X-Priority: "{{ if ge (len .Zones ) 1 }} 4{{ else }} 3{{ end }}"
      - X-Tags: "{{ if ge (len .Zones ) 1 }} rotating_light, {{ end }}walking"
...

The above headers include an Authorization token which is collected from environment variables. They also modify the Ntfy notification priority & tags depending on whether the detected object is within a zone or not.

Let's take a look at how this looks using the sample notification screenshots below. Before the person enters a zone, a Ntfy notification is sent with the default priority (3) & a walking person emoji. However, once that person enters into a zone, the notification is changed to a high priority (4) and includes a rotating_light emoji to draw attention to the alert.

Before object enters zone	After object enters zone

Available Variables

The list below doesn't contain every possible variable, just a few of the most common. Most come from the event payload received from Frigate, but a few extras have been added to help make building templates easier.

Info

If you're already familiar with Golang templates, check out event.go. Events received from Frigate are parsed into the Event struct, so any of those fields can be used within notifications. Please note that the struct is a combined list of possible fields from both web API & MQTT payloads, which are slightly different. So there may be a few that are only available if you're using the web API event retrieval method, for example.

Variable Name	Description
.Camera	Name of camera
.HasClip	Reports true if clip is available
.HasSnapshot	Reports true if snapshot is available
.ID	Frigate event ID
.Label	Label of detected object
.StartTime	Unix timestamp of event start
.EndTime	Unix timestamp of event end
.Extra.FormattedTime	Converted & formatted timestamp of event start (Uses alerts > general > timeformat config setting if specified)
.Extra.TopScorePercent	Percent confidence of object detection label
.Extra.ZoneList	List of current zones object is in
.Extra.LocalURL	Frigate server URL as specified under frigate > server
.Extra.PublicURL	Frigate Public URL as specified under frigate > public_url

Environment variables

Templates can also retrieve values from environment variables using a built-in env function. Environment variables used within templates must contain the FN_ prefix.

For example, storing an authentication token within an env variable:

...
  headers:
    - Authorization: Basic {{ env "FN_AUTH_BASIC" }}
...