created: 20141008134425548
modified: 20211031172913375
tags: Widgets
title: ActionWidgets
type: text/vnd.tiddlywiki

Action widgets are a special type of widget that have no visual appearance but perform an action when triggered (such as sending a message, navigating to a tiddler, or changing the value of a tiddler). Action widgets are used in association with other widgets that [[trigger those actions|TriggeringWidgets]] (for example, the ButtonWidget).

The following action widgets are provided:

<<list-links "[tag[ActionWidgets]]">>

There are two ways to use action widgets:

* Placing them within an action string attribute (typically called `actions`) on the triggering widget (this is the preferred way)
* Embedding the actions within the triggering widget (an older technique that is now deprecated)

!! Using action string attributes

The action widgets are passed as a string to the `actions` attribute of the [[triggering widget|TriggeringWidgets]]. Usually, it is more convenient to use a macro to assign the action widgets to a variable. For example, here is a button that triggers two actions of sending different messages:

```
\define my-actions()
<$action-sendmessage $message="tm-home"/>
<$action-sendmessage $message="tm-full-screen"/>
\end

<$button actions=<<my-actions>>>
Click me!
</$button>
```

!! Directly embedding action widgets

The action widgets need not be immediate children of their [[triggering widget|TriggeringWidgets]], but they must be descendents of it. The actions are performed in sequence. Here is the above example rewritten to use embedding:

```
<$button>
<$action-sendmessage $message="tm-home"/>
<$action-sendmessage $message="tm-full-screen"/>
Click me!
</$button>
```

! Action Execution Modes

{{ActionWidget Execution Modes}}