Laravel Nova Detached Actions Tool

Deprecation Notice ⚠️

GoBrightspot is no longer maintaining this project. Please fork it to continue development.

Intro

A Laravel Nova tool to allow for placing actions in the Nova toolbar, detached from the checkbox selection mechanism.

⚠️ Keep in mind, since the action is detached from the row selection checkboxes in the resource table, you will not have a collection of models to iterate over. Detached actions are intended to be independent of the selection in the table.

⚠️ Also, keep in mind, pivot actions are not supported and have not been tested.

Installation

You can install the package in to a Laravel app that uses Nova via composer:

composer require gobrightspot/nova-detached-actions

The tool will be automatically registered via the ToolServiceProvider

Usage

Create a custom Nova Action file:

php artisan nova:action ExportUsers

Instead of extending the ExportUsers class with the Laravel\Nova\Actions\Action class, swap it with the Brightspot\Nova\Tools\DetachedActions\DetachedAction class.

Since we won't receive a collection of $models, you can remove the variable from the handle method, so that the signature is public function handle(ActionFields $fields).

You can also customize the button label, by overriding the label() method. If you do not override the label, it will 'humanize' the class name, in the example ExportUsers would become Export Users.

By default, the detached action will only appear on the Index Toolbar.

If you want to also show the action on the resource index view (when users select a row with a checkbox), set the $public $showOnIndex = true; If you want to also show the action on the resource detail view (when user selects the action from the dropdown), set the $public $showOnDetail = true;

Here's a full example:

<?php

namespace App\Nova\Actions;

use Brightspot\Nova\Tools\DetachedActions\DetachedAction;
use Illuminate\Bus\Queueable;
use Illuminate\Queue\SerializesModels;
use Illuminate\Queue\InteractsWithQueue;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Laravel\Nova\Fields\ActionFields;

class ExportUsers extends DetachedAction
{
    use InteractsWithQueue, Queueable, SerializesModels;
    
    /**
     * Get the displayable label of the button.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function label()
    {
        return __('Export Users');
    }

    /**
     * Perform the action.
     *
     * @param  ActionFields  $fields
     *
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle(ActionFields $fields)
    {
        // Do work to export records

        return DetachedAction::message('It worked!');
    }

    /**
     * Get the fields available on the action.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function fields()
    {
        return [];
    }
}

Register the action on your resource:

/**
 * Get the actions available for the resource.
 *
 * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
 * @return array
 */
public function actions(Request $request)
{
    return [
        new App\Nova\Actions\ExportUsers
    ];
}

Chunking and repetitive calls to the handle()

If you initiate an action on the background Nova will chunk up the total amount of records and call the handle() function of your DetachedAction for each chunk. This could have unexpected performance impact as the system will perform your action for each chunk of records. This happens in the handleRequest() function of \Laravel\Nova\Actions\Action.php.

To prevent this the simplest way is to overrule this function in your DetachedAction. this is a bare example dispatching just a job without any checks or other logic:

/** @return array<int,string> */
public function handleRequest(ActionRequest $request): array
{
    dispatch(new GenerateTicketReport($request->resolveFields()));
    return DetachedAction::message('Nice job!');
}

Display on different screens

showOnIndexToolbar()

Show the detached action buttons on the index page toolbar (i.e. the default location). Do not show on the index grid action dropdown,

onlyOnIndexToolbar()

Only show the detached action buttons on the index toolbar. Do not show them anywhere else.

exceptOnIndexToolbar

Show the detached action buttons everywhere except the index toolbar.

onlyOnIndex

Show the detached action buttons only on the index view. Allows them to be displayed on the standalone dropdown or in the grid action dropdown.

showOnDetailToolbar()

Show the detached action buttons on the detail page toolbar (i.e. the default location).

onlyOnDetailToolbar()

Only show the detached action buttons on the index toolbar. Do not show them anywhere else.

exceptOnDetailToolbar

Show the detached action buttons everywhere except the detail toolbar.

onlyOnDetail

Show the detached action buttons only on the detail view. Allows them to be displayed on the standalone dropdown or in the action dropdown.

Usage with the Laravel Nova Excel DownloadExcel action

You can easily integrate the DetachedAction tool with the Laravel Nova Excel DownloadExcel action by simply passing some additional data along using withMeta().

/**
  * Get the actions available for the resource.
  *
  * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
  * @return array
  */
 public function actions(Request $request)
 {
     return [
         (new DownloadExcel)->withHeadings()->askForWriterType()->withMeta([
             'detachedAction' => true,
             'label' => 'Export',
             'name' => 'Export',
             'showOnIndexToolbar' => true
         ])->confirmButtonText('Export'),
     ];
 }

Customizing Buttons

Visible vs Invisible Buttons

By default, the component will show the first 3 buttons and put the rest into a dropdown menu. If you want to change the number of buttons visible per resource, you can do so by using the additionalInformation method, like so:

public static function additionalInformation(Request $request)
{
    return [
        'visibleActionsLimit' => 4
    ];
}

You can also change the icon type and whether or not you want to display a dropdown arrow for the invisible action menu:

public static function additionalInformation(Request $request)
{
    return [
        'visibleActionsLimit' => 2,
        'showInvisibleActionsArrow' => true,
        'invisibleActionsIcon' => 'menu'
    ];
}

Customizing Button Classes

The package ships with some common sense default HTML classes that are applied to the action buttons. In the component, we automatically assign the following:

btn btn-default ml-3 detached-action-button flex justify-center items-center

The action buttons are buttons so it makes sense to assign the btn and btn-default classes, we also want consistent spacing between buttons, so we apply ml-3 and to line up the icons and text inside the button, we use flex justify-center items-center. Further, in order to allow theme developers to set a specific class name to hook into, we apply detached-action-button on both the Index and Detail views.

On top of these classes, the DetachedAction class provides btn-primary as a default, that will give the buttons the default button color, i.e. blue in the default Nova theme.

A developer can add classes on the fly, using the extraClassesWithDefault() and extraClasses() methods on the DetachedAction class.

The extraClassesWithDefault() method

If you want to keep the default classes but add extra classes alongside them, then you probably want to use this method. You can pass an array of single class names or multiple class names separated by spaces.

return [
    (new ImportUsers)->extraClassesWithDefault('bg-info')
];

The extraClasses() method

You are free to use any tailwind/nova class.

return [
   (new ImportUsers)->extraClasses('bg-logo text-white hover:black')
];

Adding an icon

You can use any of the 104 Heroicon icons by specifying the icon name in lowercase:

return [
   (new ImportUsers)->icon('add')
];

You can also customize the display of that icon using iconClasses:

return [
   (new ImportUsers)->icon('upload')->iconClasses('mr-3 -ml-2')
];

License

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