Alright I've searched through the forum and didn't find anyone talks about feature to copy Action Step from a Server Action into another. I'm not sure if it's been implemented or not, so here the request for it.
Usage case: Let say I have a particularly same but complicated Action Step that I need to have in every Server Action. I only need to perform minor edition to make it work with other Server Action. It will be much helpful if I can just copy the action and paste it into other Server Action visually then edit it there.
The current method I employ is by Open (SA) in Editor, and then find the code for particular AS, copy it, then on target SA, Open in Editor, paste the code there.
A visual implementation for this step will greatly improve user experience.
Implementation suggestion @George:
Copying Steps would result into copying the JSON representation to clipboard
Pasting Steps would result in merging the JSON representation from clipboard with the current Server Action JSON representation, at the Step point the user pasted (e.g.: if pasting in the middle, then paste from clipboard into the Server Action's JSON middle)
Trigger a view refresh after a Paste
I don’t think this is particularly difficult to implement. I can’t take a look at Wappler’s source-code, but there’s already a right-click menu to allow adding new Steps in that position, so I think it’d be relatively easy to paste Steps there. Don’t know about copying (particularly, the ability to copy multiple Steps at the same time)
This feature request was initially made in September 2019, that’s more than 2 years for a copy-paste functionality that’s been taken for granted in every other software. I would consider wise to bring this to Wappler v5
I would have thought the main problem is that following a copy/paste, the chances are that the server action would not work, for various reasons: missing variables and/or input parameters etc.
If you’re used to copy/pasting sections of code between server actions, you of course won’t be surprised by this and will edit the code accordingly. However, if you’re not used to dealing with the code directly, you might be surprised that this feature typically results in broken server actions - which would make it intrinsically a somewhat unsatisfactory feature.
If a copy/paste option could analyse and display a list of things that needed fixing, I think this would solve the problem. I don’t imagine this would be a trivial matter to incorporate, but I’m sure it would be possible. I suppose a simpler solution would be to display a warning message indicating that the server action might need editing.
I often do this too - probably more often than not. However, it would often be useful to be able to copy/paste one or more individual steps between server actions.
Copy and paste server action steps is now possible in Wappler 7 beta 6. You can copy and paste single or multiple steps between different server actions by simply using ctrl+c/cmd+c and ctrl+v/cmd+v shortcut keys.
