Helpers methods for Laravel Actions

an opinionated lightweight package for creating Action classes

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require defstudio/actions

Usage

Add use DefStudio\Actions\ActAsAction; trait to your action class or extend DefStudio\Actions\Action

(optional) add a dockblock to hint the static run method parameters and return types

/**
 * @method static void run(Report|int $report)
 */
class DeleteReport
{
    use ActsAsAction;

    public function handle(Report|int $report): void
    {
        if (is_int($report)) {
            $report = Report::findOrFail($report);
        }

        DB::transaction(function () use ($report) {
            $report->delete_data();
            $report->delete();
        });
    }
}

class DeleteReport extends \DefStudio\Actions\Action
{
    public function handle(Report|int $report): bool
    {
        if (is_int($report)) {
            $report = Report::findOrFail($report);
        }

        return DB::transaction(function () use ($report) {
            $report->delete_data();
            return $report->delete();
        });
    }
}

Use the new methods:

$result = DeleteReport::run($report->id); //true

$result = DeleteReport::make()->handle($report->id); //true

Run multiple actions as once

an action can be run multiple times by calling its runMany() method

$results = DeleteReport::runMany($report1->id, $report2->id, $report3->id); //[true, false, true]

each run's result will be collected in an array and returned by runMany()

notes

if multiple parameters are required, they can be wrapped in an array (associative array keys will be treated as named arguments):

class{
    use InjectsItself;
 
    public function handle($name = 'guest', $title = 'Mr.'): string
    {
        return "$title $name";
    }
}

$result = MyAwesomeAction::runMany(['Elizabeth', "Ms."], ['Fabio'],  ['title' => 'Mrs.']);

// $result = ["Ms. Elizabeth", "Mr. Fabio", "Mrs. guest"] 

Mockable actions

Also, you can define a mock for the action (it will be authomatically bound to the app container):

FindTheAnswerToLifeTheUniverseAndEverything::mock(fn ($report_id) => 42);

FindTheAnswerToLifeTheUniverseAndEverything::run() // 42

if you are interested in only mocking the return value, you can write:

FindTheAnswerToLifeTheUniverseAndEverything::mock(42);

if your action has public methods other than handle, they can be mocked as well:

MyWeirdAction::mock(handle: fn() => 5, handleForAdmin: fn() => 42);

without arguments, mocks returns a MockInterface instance ready to be used

MyAction::mock()->shouldNotReceive('handle');

a partial mock (i.e. for actions with more than a single method)

BuildOrder::partial_mock(fromRequest: fn() => true);

//this will not be mocked
BuildOrder::make()->fromJson($data);

along with mocks, actions can also be spied:

$spiedAction = MyAction::spy();

$spiedAction->handle();
$spiedAction->handle();

$spiedAction->shouldHaveReceived()->handle()->twice()

Dispatchable actions

An action can be made dispatchable as a job with the ActsAsJob trait (or extending the Action class)

a job can be created by calling the job() static method:

dispatch(LongRunningAction::job($argument_1, $argument_2));

or can be dispatched with its dedicated methods:

LongRunningAction::dispatch($argument_1, $argument_2);

LongRunningAction::dispatchSync($argument_1, $argument_2);

LongRunningAction::dispatchAfterResponse($argument_1, $argument_2);

The action will be dispatched wrapped in a ActionJob decorator that will proxy properties as needed:

use DefStudio\Actions\Concerns\ActsAsJob;

class LongRunningAction{
    use ActsAsJob;
    
    public int $timeout = 2 * 60 * 60;
    public int $tries = 4;
    public array $backoff = [60, 120, 300, 600];
    public string $queue = 'long-running';
    
    public function handle(){...}
}

Cleaning up after failed action job

Failed action jobs can be handled by defining a jobFailed() method:

class LongRunningAction{
    use ActsAsJob;
       
    public function handle(){..}
    
    public function jobFailed($exception)
    {
        $this->handleFailure();
    }
    
    private function handleFailure(){..}
}

Batches and Chains of action jobs

Similarly to the runMany() method, a new batch/chain of action jobs can be created starting from an array of parameters:

MyAction::batch([$name1, $title1], [$name2, $title2])->dispatch();

MyAction::chain([$name1, $title1], [$name2, $title2])->dispatch();

Testing

composer test

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security Vulnerabilities

Please review our security policy on how to report security vulnerabilities.

Credits

• Fabio Ivona
• All Contributors

This project was inspired and is built as an opinionated and simplified implementation of Loris Leiva's Laravel Actions. For a more powerful tool, you should take a look at it.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.