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Creating custom actions

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If you’re creating automations, you might run into a situation where you would like to have custom actions for your automation. Mailcoach allows you to extend the available actions easily.

Creating a custom action

Actions must extend the Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Support\Actions\AutomationAction class.

By default, the dropdown in the interface will show the classname of the action, you can implement the static method getName() to return a more user-friendly name for the action.

The getCategory method is required to implement and should be a value of the Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Support\Actions\Enums\ActionCategoryEnum enum.

There are three optional methods you can implement that control the flow of the automation once a subscriber reaches your action:

run(Subscriber $subscriber): void

This method is executed once, when the subscriber is added to this action for the first time, in the SendAutomationMailAction we use this to send the automation mail to the Subscriber:

public function run(Subscriber $subscriber): void
{
    $this->automationMail->send($subscriber);
}

shouldContinue(Subscriber $subscriber): bool

This method returns true by default, which means the Subscriber is moved on to the next action once the action’s run method has been called.

In the WaitAction, this is used to wait a certain duration before the subscriber is moved to the next action:

public function shouldContinue(Subscriber $subscriber): bool
{
    if ($subscriber->pivot->created_at <= now()->sub($this->interval)) {
        return true;
    }

    return false;
}

Inside actions, you have access to the pivot of the subscriber_actions relationship, which allows you to access when a subscriber was added to the action. The duration in the WaitAction is set in the UI, more on that below.

shouldHalt(Subscriber $subscriber): bool

This method returns false by default, this method allows you to completely halt the automation flow for a subscriber when returning true, even if there would be other actions after the current one.

Creating settings fields & validation

Most actions, like the WaitAction require some user configuration in the UI. When you need this there’s a few extra methods you can implement:

class WaitAction extends AutomationAction
{
    public CarbonInterval $interval;

    public function __construct(CarbonInterval $interval)
    {
        parent::__construct();

        $this->interval = $interval;
    }

    public static function getComponent(): ?string
    {
        return 'wait-action';
    }

    public static function make(array $data): self
    {
        return new self(CarbonInterval::createFromDateString("{$data['length']} {$data['unit']}"));
    }

    public function toArray(): array
    {
        [$length, $unit] = explode(' ', $this->interval->forHumans());

        return [
            'length' => $length,
            'unit' => Str::plural($unit),
        ];
    }
}

getComponent

The getComponent() method expects a Livewire component’s name to be returned. In this component, you can add any fields necessary for your trigger.

This component should extend our \Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Support\Livewire\AutomationActionComponent class, which allows you to have access to the current automation inside your component.

The getData method has to return the data you want stored inside the action.

For example, the wait-action component renders a simple blade view with a text field and has some validation rules:

The validation rules are stored on the Livewire component here, as the automation builder, which is also a Livewire component, handles all validation.

use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Support\Livewire\AutomationActionComponent;

class WaitActionComponent extends AutomationActionComponent
{
    public string $length = '1';

    public string $unit = 'days';

    public array $units = [
        'minutes' => 'Minute',
        'hours' => 'Hour',
        'days' => 'Day',
        'weeks' => 'Week',
        'months' => 'Month',
    ];

    public function getData(): array
    {
        return [
            'length' => (int) $this->length,
            'unit' => $this->unit,
        ];
    }

    public function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            'length' => ['required', 'integer', 'min:1'],
            'unit' => ['required', Rule::in([
                'minutes',
                'hours',
                'days',
                'weeks',
                'months',
            ])],
        ];
    }

    public function render()
    {
        return view('mailcoach::app.automations.components.actions.waitAction');
    }
}

When creating an action component’s view, you should wrap this inside the <x-mailcoach::automation-action> blade component.

This will make sure the edit & save buttons are shown correctly. This is the view of the wait-action component as an example:

@verbatim
<x-mailcoach::automation-action :index="$index" :action="$action" :editing="$editing" :editable="$editable" :deletable="$deletable">
    <x-slot name="legend">
        {{__('Wait for ') }}
        <span class="legend-accent">
            {{ ($length && $unit && $interval = \Carbon\CarbonInterval::createFromDateString("{$length} {$unit}")) ? $interval->cascade()->forHumans() : '…' }}
        </span>
    </x-slot>

    <x-slot name="form">
        <div class="col-span-8 sm:col-span-4">
            <x-mailcoach::text-field
                :label="__('Length')"
                :required="true"
                name="length"
                wire:model="length"
                type="number"
            />
        </div>

        <div class="col-span-4 sm:col-span-2">
        <x-mailcoach::select-field
            :label="__('Unit')"
            :required="true"
            name="unit"
            wire:model="unit"
            :options="
                collect($units)
                    ->mapWithKeys(fn ($label, $value) => [$value => \Illuminate\Support\Str::plural($label, (int) $length)])
                    ->toArray()
            "
        />
        </div>
    </x-slot>
</x-mailcoach::automation-action>
@endverbatim

make

The static make() method receives the validated data from the request, in this method you add the necessary parsing from raw data to your action’s required data structure and call the constructor.

toArray

The toArray() method is used to return the data in a format fit for processing in the Livewire component.

Registering your custom action

You can register your custom action by adding the classname to the mailcoach.automation.flows.actions config key.

Creating custom triggers
Creating an automation