=head1 NAME Catalyst::Manual::Actions - Catalyst Reusable Actions =head1 DESCRIPTION This section of the manual describes the reusable action system in Catalyst, how they work, descriptions of some existing ones, and how to write your own. Reusable actions are attributes on Catalyst methods that allow you to decorate your method with functions running before or after the method call. This can be used to implement commonly used action patterns, while still leaving you full freedom to customize them. =head1 USING ACTIONS This is pretty simple. It works just like the normal dispatch attributes you are used to, like Local or Private: sub Hello :Local :ActionClass('SayBefore') { $c->res->output( 'Hello '.$c->stash->{what} ); } In this example, we expect the SayBefore action to magically populate stash with something relevant before C is run. In the next section we'll show you how to implement it. If you want it in another namespace than Catalyst::Action you can prefix the action name with a '+', for instance '+Foo::SayBefore', or if you just want it under your application namespace instead, use MyAction, like MyAction('SayBefore'). =head1 WRITING YOUR OWN ACTIONS Implementing the action itself is almost as easy. Just use L as a base class and decorate the C call in the Action class: package Catalyst::Action::SayBefore; use base 'Catalyst::Action'; sub execute { my $self = shift; my ( $controller, $c, $test ) = @_; $c->stash->{what} = 'world'; $self->NEXT::execute( @_ ); }; 1; If you want to do something after the action, just put it after the C call. Pretty simple, huh? =head1 ACTIONS =head2 Catalyst::Action::RenderView This is meant to decorate end actions. It's similar in operation to L, but allows you to decide on an action level rather than on an application level where it should be run. =head1 AUTHOR The Catalyst Core Team - see http://catalyst.perl.org/ =head1 COPYRIGHT This program is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.