Add support for custom action buttons in the editor

[creativesuspects]

At the moment the editor only shows two buttons: Return to list and Save. It would be nice to be able to add custom buttons that allow for additional actions within the event handlers. The KonstruktEntitySavingNotification and KonstruktEntitySavedNotification could have something like an Action (string) property, so you can use that value to implement additional functionality. For example you could have a Save and Save and send invoice button. When the Save and send invoice button is clicked the KonstruktEntitySavedNotification.Action property could contain the value 'SendInvoice' (or whatever the developer wants to use) and the event handler would know to also send out an email after the entity has been saved to the database by Konstrukt.

This could also be used to skip Konstrukt's saving functionalitity entirely and only do some bespoke stuff. For example you'd have a Generate certificate button. You could then use the KonstruktEntitySavingNotification event to generate a PDF certificate (and maybe do some custom database actions) and skip Konstrukt's default save procedure by cancelling the event after you've done your custom work. Or would this result in an error message in the backoffice?

public class MyEntitySavedEventHandler : INotificationHandler<KonstruktEntitySavedNotification>
{
    public void Handle(KonstruktEntitySavedNotification notification)
    {
        if (notification.Action == "SendInvoice")
        {
            // Send the invoice
        }
    }
}

public class MyEntitySavingEventHandler : INotificationHandler<KonstruktEntitySavingNotification>
{
    public void Handle(KonstruktEntitySavingNotification notification)
    {
        if (notification.Action == "GenerateCertificate")
        {
            // Generate certificate (PDF) and do some bespoke database work

            // Cancel the event to prevent saving, we only want to generate the certificate
            notification.Cancel = true;
            return;
        }
    }
}

[mattbrailsford]

I think for general entity actions like the "Generate certificate", I'd probably say lets keep them in the actions menu drop down in the top right as I really wouldn't want to fill up the footer bar with tons of buttons.

But the "Save" actions is kind of interesting and I have just been playing around with this and have something working.

It essentially introducing a new ActionType that can be used by the action visibility control https://docs.getkonstrukt.net/actions/action-visibility so you can now expose a button for ctx.ActionType == KonstruktActionType.Save. This would then add the action to the save buttons menu like you see in the content sections "Save and Publish". I've currently made the decision though that these actions should all be "Save & [do something]" so a save is always triggered by these actions and then the subsequent action is triggered straight after.

As a save is always triggered, Konstrukt auto prefixes "Save &" to the buttons label.

I toyed with allowing save actions to not require a save, but it started to make the config awkward and I think it's not entirely necesarry given we can add actions to the actions menu that is on the same screen so I think a rule could be "Save actions always trigger a save" and if you don't want to, then you create a normal action instead.

How does this sound?

[creativesuspects]

Ooh, very nice. 👌 So these buttons would always trigger the default save behavior and you can add additional functionality to the public override KonstruktActionResult Execute() method of the custom KonstruktAction, correct?

Re: general entity actions: I assume it's also possible to add custom actions to the editors (not just the list views)? In that case I agree that the actions menu drop down is a better place for these types of actions and prevent flooding the button bar.

[mattbrailsford]

Yup, that’s correct on both counts.

Save actions would trigger a save and then if successful call your actions Execute method.

And yea, there is an EntityMenu action type to display general entity actions in that actions menu.

[creativesuspects]

Perfect! Start merging! 😉

[mattbrailsford]

Ok, I've just released this feature this morning in Konstrukt 1.6.0.

I've also updated the docs with with this new action type https://docs.getkonstrukt.net/actions/action-visibility#save

[creativesuspects]

Awesome stuff! Thanks for the swift action!