Nova Actions, i`m frustrated - empty resource on click

[jansgescheit]

Sorry I'm a little frustrated with Nova.

I define an action on a Nova resource and the public function actions(NovaRequest $request): array method.
Now I have the following problems where I doubt myself a little bit and I can`t find anything in the documentation.

In the index view I can access $this / $this->resource in the said method and get a filled eloquent model for the respective row of the the resource. I have the same behavior in the detail view. However, as soon as I click on an action in the detail view, the action method of the Nova Resource is executed again and $this contains an eloquent model, but this is an empty one. At this point the context is somehow forgotten and I have to restore it manually.

This confuses me and I am now reading the model data separately to use it:

class Post extends Resource
{
    public static $model = \App\Models\Post::class;

    [...]

    public function actions(NovaRequest $request): array
    {
        /** @var Post $resource */
        $resource = $request->selectedResources()->first() ?? $this; 

        // index $this is filled
        // detail $this is filled
        // detail + Action Click $this is not filled

        return [
            EMailAction::make($this->locale), // wont work on Detail + Action Click,
            EMailAction::make($resource->locale), // will work on Detail + Action Click, but not on index if more than one is selected
        ];
    }
}

As I said this is very confusing to think in different dimensions (Index/Detail/Click/Index Select) here. Why doesn't Nova fill the $this object correctly here?

I believe that there are more side effects that also do not work as expected. Is this now a bug a feature? Am i doing something wrong?

[crynobone]

EMailAction::make($resource->locale), // will work on Detail + Action Click, but not on index if more than one is selected

Obviously, this would cause an issue when locale can now be multiple (different for each resource) but there's only a single instance of EMailAction. You should only allow this action to be selected for following usage:

1. Single resource selected from Index
2. Inline action button
3. Detail page

EMailAction::make()->canSee(function (NovaRequest $request) {
    return $request->selectedResourceIds()?->count() === 1;
})->showInline()->showOnDetail(),

    /**
     * Perform the action on the given models.
     *
     * @param  \Laravel\Nova\Fields\ActionFields  $fields
     * @param  \Illuminate\Support\Collection  $models
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle(ActionFields $fields, Collection $models)
    {
        $locale = $models->first()->locale;

[crynobone]

If you need to access the value from fields(), you should be able to get the current resource using $request->selectedResources()->first() or $request->findModel()

[jansgescheit]

thanks for your tipps!

Inside of the field() method $request->selectedResources()->first() I get the expected data set. With the method $request->findModel() I get only a new eloquent model without data.

This I think is for someone who is not 100% into Nova, just has the documentation. Where I think it still lacks some information just how the lifecycle looks like, very difficult to think of all possible dimensions here.

It would be nice from the expectation if this was somehow uniformly designed. Especially since the action() as well as fields() method is currently already called for each individual model.

[crynobone]

It would be nice from the expectation if this was somehow uniformly designed. Especially since the action() as well as fields() method is currently already called for each individual model.

Actions were designed to handle multiple resources first and that design persist until now. As explained earlier it always recommended to access $model from handle() method where you can safely handle multiple models or a single model without any issue.

[crynobone]

Trying to access multiple resources and handle everything under fields() is where you get all these issues. So limit selected based on the above suggestion.

[crynobone]

New in 4.26.0 you can simplify the above suggestion using sole()

EMailAction::make()->sole(),