Create action scripts

When I should use action scripts?

There is a checklist before selecting action script as your solution:

• I need add an action that user can trigger it?

  If yes, It can be action script. Users can use menus, shortcuts, and commands to trigger action scripts. You can use other ways to add triggerable actions, but action scripts are a standard way, specially for a lot of actions.

• I need add a new option in menus?

  If yes, It must be action script. Everything in menus is action script.

• I need add a new command?

  If yes, It may be action script. Action scripts have internal command defining system, and you can use them from command palette, but you can define commands from everywhere in Text Forge, in modes, panels, extensions, action scripts, etc.

Regular action scripts

There is some different types of action scripts based on their base classes, ActionScript class designed for regular action scripts and can handle a lot of tasks.

To add new action script you should make sure there is an item in menus for that action script, you can use data/main_ui.ini to add new options (or menus), to understand about structure of this file you can see here. After select your option create a script in action_scripts/ directory with same name (but in snake_case), it this case we will create Copy Path action script that will copy file path of opened file in clipboard, so we will create action_scripts/copy_path.gd and use this script as start point:

extends ActionScript

Just that! Run project and see option is enabled. But there is no action for now, so we have 3 steps to complete our action script:

Add initializing

We needn't any special initializing for this action script, all we need is disabling it when there is no opened file, there is ready-made feature for this:

extends ActionScript

func _initialize() -> void:
    requires_file = true
    requires_saved_file = true

With this function ActionScript class will disable option when there isn't saved file, it means when you create a new file this option will keep disabled until that file saved, because before that there is no file path. Otherwise, (for example when user uses Open) option will be enabled.

Add main action

We have initialized action script, but there is no action, so let's add it. To do this we use _run_action() function, this function will be called when user clicks in option in menus, presses shortcut (we will add shortcut later) or uses command palette. So we can complete our action script with this function:

extends ActionScript

func _initialize() -> void:
    requires_file = true
    requires_saved_file = true

func _run_action() -> void:
    DisplayServer.clipboard_set(Global.get_file_path())

Almost done! We have completed action script, and you can try it now in witch way you want.

Add shortcut

There is an easy way for adding shortcuts to action scripts, so let's see how we can do it. To have shortcut we need a Shortcut resource stored in shortcuts/ directory, so go to Godot's FileSystem dock and use RMB on res://shortcuts/, then click on Create New > Resource... and create a Shortcut resource and save it as copy_path.tres. Shortcut will be opened in Inspector, click on Events and add new element, then create a new InputEventKey in that element. Use Configure button and set your shortcut, then run project and try it. You can open command palette (Ctrl+P) and type copy path to see shortcut.