Operations (Actions) Glossary 

  • Buttons are a user interface component that helps deliver custom actions for user interaction. They provide a way to demonstrate any actions (operations, for example) to UI for a proper context through specific ButtonsProviderExtension together with Buttons matched by a context.

  • Operation are configured user interaction elements (buttons, links or even further: forms, pages) with customized execution logic. One of the main components is ActionBundle which handles information about a specific operation logic, how and when a UI element is displayed, the reaction it provides, and how to aggregate the data retrieved from a user (usually through a form) into execution unit values and launch configured Actions afterward.

The operation definition contains the most important information, such as operation related entity classes (‘AcmeBundleDemoBundleEntityMyEntity’), or routes (‘acme_demo_myentity_view’), or datagrids (‘acme-demo-grid’).

The operation can be enabled or disabled. Other fields of the operation contain information about its name, extended options, and order of displayed buttons. For more options please refer to Operation Configuration.

  • Action Group is complex business logic sets of backend actions grouped together under the named configuration nodes. It is another key component in ActionBundle. A named group of actions with entry parameters (required or optional, typed or not) and conditions.

    Action groups can be used not only from an operation but within the workflow processes and in any part of the OroPlatform configuration nodes that understand Actions.

A special @run_action_group action is designed to run a group of actions as a single one. (For more information please refer to *ActionGroup* configuration and @run_action_group action.

  • Condition - defines whether Operation or ActionGroup is allowed. Conditions use ConfigExpression syntax and can be nested within each other.

  • Actions- simple functional blocks (that are described in Action Component). They can be used in ActionGroups or Operations to implement the preparation logic before conditions, to retrieve rendering data, to initialize and execute the logic afterward.

    • Operations contain the following actions: Preactions (preactions), the Form Init actions (form_init), and Actions themselves with the functions of Action Component. The difference is that preactions are executed before the operation button rendering, though the form_init actions are executed before the form display. Actions can be used to perform any operations with data in their context (called Action Data) or other entities.

    • Definition - part of Operation or ActionGroup that contains the configuration of the component itself and describes its behavior.

  • Attribute - an entity that represents a value (mostly in Operation) and is used to render a field value in a step of a form. The attribute knows about its type (string, object, entity, etc.) and additional options. The attribute contains a name and label as additional parameters.