Generators and Actions

What is a generator?

A generator produces boolean trues and sends them via the output property trigger.

There are many types of generators:

• A periodic timer
• A scheduler
• A changed file on the filesystem (fs_notify)
• A random bool generator
• An user which has pressed a button on the user interface
• A physical event from an input device like a keystroke

What is a action?

A action is something which should be executed or processed only and only if the input property trigger receives a boolean true.

Combine triggers and actions within a single entity using components

An entity instance can have multiple components.

For example, you can combine file with fs_notify and load_binary.

By doing so, the trigger property is both:

• A generator: The component fs_notify fires trigger when the file has been modified on the filesystem
• A action: The component load_binary gets triggered immediately and loads the content of the file into a property

This example shows the great possibilities of the component system and how to use the generator-action-system. By combining components into one single entity instance, the behaviour of the entity instance can get more complex. At the same time a flow is more compact.

Another example is to combine a user-interface-button as generator with an update-the-asset-repository as an action.