ON ACTION block

The ON ACTION action-name blocks execute a sequence of instructions when the user triggers a specific action.

A typical action handler block looks like this:

  ON ACTION action-name
     instruction
     ...

Action blocks will be bound by name to action views (like buttons) in the current form. Action views can be buttons in forms, toolbar buttons, topmenu options, and if no explicit action view is defined, actions are rendered with a default action view, depending on the type of front-end.

The next example defines an action block to open a typical zoom window and let the user select a customer record:

   ON ACTION zoom 
      CALL zoom_customers() RETURNING st, rec.cust_id, rec.cust_name

In a dialog handling user input such as INPUT, INPUT ARRAY and CONSTRUCT, if an action is specific to a field, add the INFIELD clause to have the action automatically enabled when the corresponding field gets the focus:

   ON ACTION zoom INFIELD cust_city
      CALL zoom_cities() RETURN st, rec.cust_city

In most cases actions are decoration with action defaults in form files, but there can be cases where the ON ACTION handler needs to define its own attributes at the program level. This can be done by adding the ATTRIBUTES() clause of ON ACTION:

   ON ACTION custinfo ATTRIBUTES(DISCLOSUREINDICATOR, IMAGE="info")
      CALL show_customer_info()

For more details about action handlers, and action configuration, see Dialog actions.