Actions (handling AJAX-requests)

The reply.action has a special purpose: to initiate some actions or requests serverdata - it is meant to deal with AJAX-requests. The server does not reply a view, but takes some actions and returns proper data.

The reply.action takes 5 arguments: 'request’, 'reply’, 'options’, 'language’, 'manifest’.

actions is the name of the action-file which should be defined inside the actions-folder. options are additional options (object) that the action-file receives trhough the router. The action-file should be a commonjs-module with this signature:

Setting up reply.action inside routes.js

'use strict';

let routes = [
    {
        method: 'PUT',
        path: '/action-url',
        handler: function (request, reply) {
            const options = {};
            reply.action('actionname', options);
        }
    }
];

module.exports = routes;

Example action-module /actions/actionname.js

const actionFn = (request, reply, options, language, manifest) => {
    return {
        status: 'OK'
    };
};

module.exports = actionFn;

Note that the module needs to return a function that will be invoked by 5 arguments. Whatever the action-function returns, will be used to reply the request.

Asynchronous action-files

Often, you will need to perform an asynchronous action, before replying the request. If the action-function returns a Promise, then the reply will happen as soon as the Promise gets resolved, replying the Promise-result:

Example asynchronous action-module

const actionFn = async (request, reply, options, language, manifest) => {
    await doSomeAsyncStuffToWaitFor();
    return {
        status: 'OK'
    };
};

module.exports = actionFn;

Note that if the Promise gets rejected, the server will response with a 500-error holding the rejected error-value. If you want to prevent this, you should catch the error inside the action-module:

Example asynchronous action-module that never errors

const actionFn = async (request, reply, options, language, manifest) => {
    let status, message;
    try {
        await doSomeAsyncStuffToWaitFor();
        status = 'OK';
    }
    catch (err) {
        status = 'ERROR',
        message = err.message;
    }

    return {
        status,
        messsage
    };
};

module.exports = actionFn;