Multiple chat_id in channel config

[gromet]

What version of Universal Notifier are you using?

0.7.0

What version of Home Assistant are you using?

2026.4.1

The problem

Hi

Creating a notification for multiple targets works great for telegram. Good Work
Creating a channel for muliple chat_ids (comma-seperated) does not work for telegram, see log message

Anything in the logs? Paste it here!

Error while executing automation automation.waschmaschine_fertig_benachrichtigung: expected int @ data['chat_id'][0]

[pope523]

Same bug also affects Alexa Media Player (and likely any non-Telegram service)

Just confirming this isn't Telegram-specific — it's a generic problem with how the channel target field is handled. The README states the field is "optional, comma-separated for multiple targets," but the value is never actually split.

Reproduction (Alexa)

• Channel config:
  • service: notify.alexa_media
  • target: media_player.echo_kitchen, media_player.echo_living
  • is_voice: true
• Single-entity target works fine. Comma-separated list fails — the underlying service receives the literal string "media_player.echo_kitchen, media_player.echo_living" and can't resolve it as an entity.

Root cause

In config_flow.py the field is stored verbatim:

"target": (user_input.get("target") or "").strip(),

In __init__.py (async_send_notification, section H), the value is passed straight through:

conf_target_value = channel_conf.get(CONF_TARGET)
if conf_target_value:
    if srv_domain == "tts":
        service_payload[ATTR_ENTITY_ID] = conf_target_value
    elif srv_domain == "telegram_bot":
        service_payload[CONF_CHAT_ID] = conf_target_value
    else:
        service_payload[CONF_TARGET] = conf_target_value

The voice-channel branch has the same issue:

dynamic_entities = specific_data.pop(CONF_ENTITY_ID, channel_conf.get(CONF_TARGET))
if isinstance(dynamic_entities, str):
    dynamic_entities = [dynamic_entities]   # wraps but doesn't split

So whether the downstream service is notify.telegram_bot, notify.alexa_media, tts.*, or anything else, a comma-separated target is delivered as a single broken string.

Suggested fix

Normalize CONF_TARGET to a list once, right after the channel config is loaded — single place, fixes every code path:

channel_conf = channels_config[target_alias]
_t = channel_conf.get(CONF_TARGET)
if isinstance(_t, str) and "," in _t:
    channel_conf = dict(channel_conf)  # avoid mutating stored config
    channel_conf[CONF_TARGET] = [s.strip() for s in _t.split(",") if s.strip()]

For Telegram specifically, chat_id also needs to be cast to int (that's where the expected int @ data['chat_id'][0] from the original report comes from):

elif srv_domain == "telegram_bot":
    val = conf_target_value
    if isinstance(val, list):
        val = [int(x) for x in val]
    else:
        val = int(val)
    service_payload[CONF_CHAT_ID] = val

Workaround in the meantime

I patched my local copy with the snippet above and comma-separated Alexa targets now work. For anyone who'd rather not patch, defining one channel per device and listing them all in targets: on the service call also works, since the component already iterates targets correctly.