Re: [development] Actions progress

25 May 2007

      On 5/24/07 4:56 PM, John VanDyk wrote:
...
Here's a progress report on actions-in-core.
Actions now have a new architecture. Instead of a single function, an
action now consists of several functions.
1. An implementation of hook_actions_info(). In this hook, an action is
described just like it was in the 'metadata' operation of the previous
action architecture. And supported hooks are declared:
function node_action_info() {
  return array(
    'node_make_sticky_action' => array(
      'type' => 'node',
      'description' => t('Make node sticky'),
      'configurable' => FALSE,
      'hooks' => array(
        'nodeapi' => array('delete','insert','update', 'view'),
        'comment' => array('delete','insert','update', 'view'),
      ),
    ),
  );
}
Batchability has been dropped. Instead of actions declaring themselves
batchable and a node_save() being done at the end of the batch, "Save
node" is now a separate action.
2. The action itself:
/**
 * Implementation of a Drupal action.
 * Sets the sticky-at-top-of-list property of a node to 1.
 */
function node_make_sticky_action($context = array(), &$node) {
  $node->sticky = 1;
  $node->revision = 0;
  watchdog('action', t('Made node id %id sticky', array('%id' =>
$node->nid)));
}
3. If the action is a configurable action such as the "Display a message
to the user" action, it needs to define a form, validate, and submit
function. The submit function is responsible for returning a keyed array
with parameters that will be stored and used when the action is fired.
E.g., (validate function not shown):
function system_message_action_form($edit) {
      $form['message'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textarea',
        '#title' => t('Message'),
        '#default_value' => isset($edit['message']) ? $edit['message'] :
'',
        '#required' => TRUE,
        '#rows' => '8',
        '#description' => t('The message to be displayed to the current
user.  You may include the following variables: %site_name, %username,
%node_url, %node_type, %title, %teaser, %body.'),
      );
      return $form;
}
function system_message_action_form_submit($form_id, $form_values) {
  return array('message' => $form_values['message']);
}
The HEAD version of actions is now stable enough to demonstrate the
assignment of actions to various hooks. It runs on Drupal 5 currently. I
encourage you to check it out and give me feedback on
http://groups.drupal.org/actions or just in an email.
Hopefully we can have a facade action that hooks up to any Drupal form
id, and uses drupal_execute() to fire the action. That would mean many
Drupal forms become "scriptable" automatically.
Dear John,

You rock.

Love,
James
-- 
James Walker :: http://walkah.net/ :: xmpp:walkah@walkah.net