Visualforce - Beyond Basics Series 17 - Pass actions to component

What types you can pass to component ?

Custom components can take these types,

• Primitive Types
• sObjects
• Collections (Set, List, Map)
• Classes in System Namespace
•   SelectOption
•   ApexPages.Action, etc
• Custom Class/Interface

How to make component more generic ?

A component can take any form of data that could be either System defined type or custom type. So, that will cover most of the use case for components. But, as a bonus, you could pass ApexPages.Action type, which will be invoked during specific event inside the component.

How to do it ?

you need to add a attribute tag which will take the ApexPages.Action type & store it in a variable. Then, when some event happens in the component, it invokes the action.

Where is code ?

I have illustrated the simple action passed to a controller which will call this when user changes the value in the text field.

	<apex:component >
	<apex:attribute type="Account" name="record" description="The account record"/>
	<apex:attribute type="ApexPages.Action" name="saveAction" description="Custom Save Action provided by client"/>
	<apex:form >
	<apex:outputLabel value="Enter you name here"/>
	<apex:inputField value="{!record.Name}"/>
	<apex:commandButton value="save" action="{!saveAction}"/>
	</apex:form>
	</apex:component>

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub

	<apex:page standardController="Account">
	<!-- This component take any Account record & pass a custom action to handle it.
	Here, for simplicity, i have passed standard save action, but, you can pass any
	action method defined in the controller/extension
	-->
	<c:testcmp_12122016 record="{!Account}" saveAction="{!save}"/>
	</apex:page>

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub