Wednesday, January 14, 2026

The request_handler() method

The request_handler() method of an action request builds and returns the Javascript code that would execute this request on the client.

It obviously depends on the front-end renderer. The publisher renderer returns None.

It is needed by WrappedAction, ShowSlaveTable, RequestFieldElement, Renderer.href_to_request(). It is also needed by ShowSuggestions or ShowEntriesByDay, which are similar to ShowSlaveTable

It is needed by WrappedAction to build the URI for an action at runtime:

class WrappedAction(Action):
  ...
  def run_from_ui(self, ar, **kw):
      sar = self.bound_action.request_from(ar)
      js = ar.renderer.request_handler(sar)
      ar.set_response(eval_js=js)

WrappedAction is a kind of dynamic URL, it does nothing but return a Javascript snippet to be executed on the client.

The WrappedAction class is used:

• by QuickLinksList (the class of the object sitting on settings.SITE.quicklinks)

• by custom implementations of collect_extra_actions(), e.g. the “Pretty view” action on a blog entry, the “Import from VCard” action on a partner, or the actions used by the calendar view to switch between daily, weekly and monthly view.