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Action Groups

Action Group is a named block of execution logic grouped together under its own actions configuration node. Action groups can be called along with the @run_action_group action in any application configuration node that Action Component supports. The Action group declaration also has an important configuration section - parameters that describes all the data expected to obtain from the caller (with a type, requirement, default value, and validation message).

Parameters are accessible in actions as the root node of contextual data (e.g., $.parameterName). Also, along with parameters and actions, there can be optionally declared special acl_resource criteria and a custom conditions node where you can define special instructions to check against, before the bunch execution process.

Action Group Configuration

File <bundleResourceRoot>/config/oro/actions.yml

action_groups:                                  # root node for action groups
    demo_flash_greetings_to:                    # name of action group
        parameters:                             # parameters declaration node
            what:                               # name of the parameter
                type: AcmeBundle/String/Phrase  # (optional, default = any) type validation of parameter (available types: integer, string, boolean, array, double, object, PHP class)
                message: "Bad type"             # (optional) message to be prompted if parameter validation failure met
                default: "Hello"                # (optional) default value for optional parameter, if not set then parameter `what` is required
            who: ~                              # set all defaults to parameter options (type: any)
        conditions:                             # Condition expression
            @not_empty: [$.who]
        actions:                                # list of actions that should be executed
            - '@call_service_method':
                service: type_guesser
                method: guess
                method_parameters: [$.who]      # as you can see, parameters are accessible from root $.<parameterName>
                attribute: $.typeOfWho
            - '@flash_message':
                message: "%param1%, %param2%!"
                type: 'info'
                message_parameters:
                    param1: $.what
                    param2: $.typeOfWho

Now, we can run this action_group as follows:

@run_action_group:
    action_group: demo_flash_greetings_to
    parameters_mapping:
        who: $.myInstanceWithVariousType

Here, we skip the what parameter, as it has the default value.

To see the @run_action_group`syntax, please refer to :ref:`the actions section <bundle-docs-platform-action-bundle-action-component>.

Data Isolation

Note that Action group runs with empty context data. For example, if a caller context is mapped with parameters_mapping (under @run_action_group) to a new context, action group is executed along with it. In this case, there will be only the data supported by the action group parameters declaration. That is why action groups can be called from different places and under various circumstances.

Call from PHP

All named action groups are internally gathered under the oro_action.action_group_registry registry service which is the instance of the OroBundleActionBundleModelActionGroupRegistry class. It has simple api to get the action group configured instance and perform its execution by applying the \Oro\Bundle\ActionBundle\Model\ActionGroup::execute method with proper parameters.

Recommendations

User Interface

In the above mentioned actions block, we have used the action called @flash_message. That action was mentioned only for example purpose. Usually, you should not perform any user interface related actions in the action group actions set, as they are called or used only in the scope of the actions with no user interface environment available in runtime.

Using Results of Action Group

`ActionInterface` implements most actions and stores the results of these actions under their execution context object. Usually it is one of the `AbstractStorage` child instances. So all the results of the action group are accessed from the context data passed to its execute(…) method.

Here, there are two @run_action_group configuration options: results (transfers data from the action group context to the caller context separately) and result (allocates all context of the executed action group under a desired node of the caller context).

Hint

See Actions for more information about @run_action_group options.

Action Group Diagram

The following diagram shows the logic of the action group process in graphical representation:

Action Group Diagram