41 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
41 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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date: 2025-06-20
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title: My thoughts on the Action pattern
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permalink: /daily/2025/06/20/my-thoughts-action-pattern
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---
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The Action pattern is a relatively new design pattern that's become popular in the PHP community, particularly with Laravel Developers.
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The pattern is a simplified version of the Command pattern, with no separate Handler class. The Action class is responsible for the handling and execution logic.
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In most cases, an Action class only has a single public method called `execute()` or `handle()`, or uses PHP's `__invoke()` magic method.
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This is a different approach from a Service class that has multiple methods to perform different tasks.
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Here's a simplified version of the code of an Action from my website:
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```php
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<?php
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readonly final class AddRandomCtaToDailyEmail {
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public function __construct(private EntityTypeManagerInterface $entityTypeManager) {
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}
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public function __invoke(DailyEmail $email): void {
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// Checks a call to action isn't already added.
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// If not, a random one is selected and added.
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}
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}
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```
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Note the `DailyEmail` class is [a bundle class][0] I've created that extends the regular `Node` class.
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Different to a service, the class name describes the action being performed - usually starting with a verb followed by a noun to describe the action being taken and the object it's being taken on.
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It's a simple pattern that doesn't require additional packages or libraries, and it's easy to implement in different frameworks and other languages.
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Whether you call this an Action, Command or something else, I like that it encourages writing more structured code that's easy to read and test.
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[0]: /daily/2025/06/17/drupal-bundle-classes
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