3.3 Introduction to Actions & Action Scripts (IDE Context)

Actions

What is an Action?

You can think of an action as similar to a single Script Step in FileMaker. When executed, some action will occur.

The most common actions are:

• path - change the URL of the browser to take them to another page

• runUtilityHook - run a hook script on your FileMaker server

• showAlert - display a non-intrusive message to the user

What does an action look like?

An action is a JSON object that contains a key named "action". Most actions also contain an "options" key that define various parameters for the action.

Below is an example of the runUtilityHook action.

{
  "action": "runUtilityHook",
  "options": {
    "type": "save"
  }
}

and here is the showAlert action:

{
  "action": "showAlert",
  "options": {
    "text": "This is the alert message text",
    "title": "Hello World",
    "type": "information"
  }
}

Be sure to check out the Actions Reference for more details about how each action works.

Where are actions triggered?

When actions are executed, they are always added to the end of the actions queue and evaluated in order. The actions queue is always running; if the actions queue is empty it will simply wait for new actions to be added and continue processing.

Various elements throughout a BetterForms page can add actions to the queue, here are just a few examples:

• buttons - triggered when a button is clicked

• onFormLoad - triggered when a page is first loaded

• onRowClicked - specifically for the table element; triggered when a row in the table is clicked
• onFieldChanged - triggered when a field is changed

Throughout the docs, anywhere you see a reference to an "actions key" or "actions array", this is where you can place actions.

Shown below is an example of a button object with an actions array. When the button is clicked, the runUtilityHook action will be added to the actions queue. The actions queue is always running and waiting for actions.

{
  "actions": [
    {
      "action": "runUtilityHook",
      "options": {
        "type": "save"
      }
    }
  ],
  "buttonClasses": "btn btn-info btn-trans",
  "label": "",
  "styleClasses": "col-md-2",
  "text": "Save",
  "type": "button"
}