actions_overview.md

sidebar_label	Spreadsheet actions
title	Actions Overview
description	You can have an Actions overview of the DHTMLX JavaScript Spreadsheet library in the documentation. Browse developer guides and API reference, try out code examples and live demos, and download a free 30-day evaluation version of DHTMLX Spreadsheet.

Actions overview

This section is dedicated to a new conception of interaction with Spreadsheet events.

Starting from v4.3, DHTMLX Spreadsheet includes a pair of the beforeAction/afterAction events that are intended to make your code simple and concise. They will fire right before an action is executed and indicate which exactly action has been performed.

spreadsheet.events.on("beforeAction", (actionName, config) => {
    if (actionName === "addColumn") {
        console.log(actionName, config);
        return false;
    },
    // more actions
});

spreadsheet.events.on("afterAction", (actionName, config) => {
    if (actionName === "addColumn") {
        console.log(actionName, config)
    },
    // more actions
});

The full list of the available actions is given below.

It means, that you don't have to constantly add sets of paired before- and after- events anymore to track and handle the actions which you execute when changing something in the spreadsheet.

But if needed you can use an old approach because all the existing events will continue work as before:

spreadsheet.events.on("afterColumnAdd", function(cell){
    console.log("A new column is added", cell);
});

spreadsheet.events.on("beforeColumnAdd", function(cell){
    console.log("A new column will be added", cell);
    return true;
});

List of actions

Action	Description
addColumn	The action is executed when adding a new column
addRow	The action is executed when adding a new row
addSheet	The action is executed when adding a new sheet
clear	The action is executed when clearing the spreadsheet via the clear() method
clearSheet	The action is executed when clearing a sheet via the clearSheet() method
deleteColumn	The action is executed when removing a column
deleteRow	The action is executed when removing a row
deleteSheet	The action is executed when removing a sheet
filter	The action is executed when filtering data in a sheet
fitColumn	The action is executed when auto-fitting the width of the column
groupAction	The action is executed when selecting a range of cells and applying to them some actions (for instance, change the style or format of cells, lock/unlock the cells, clear cells' value or styles, etc.)
insertLink	The action is executed when inserting a hyperlink in a cell
lockCell	The action is executed when locking/unlocking a cell
merge	The action is executed when merging a range of cells
removeCellStyles	The action is executed when clearing styles of a cell
renameSheet	The action is executed when renaming a sheet
resizeCol	The action is executed when resizing a column
resizeRow	The action is executed when resizing a row
setCellFormat	The action is executed when changing the format of a cell
setCellValue	The action is executed when changing or removing the value of a cell
setValidation	The action is executed when setting data validation for a cell
sortCells	The action is executed when sorting data in spreadsheet
setCellStyle	The action is executed when changing the style of a cell
toggleVisibility	The action is executed when hiding/showing a column or a row
toggleFreeze	The action is executed when freezing/unfreezing columns/rows
unmerge	The action is executed when splitting cells

Change log:

• The toggleFreeze and toggleVisibility actions were added in v5.2
• The merge, unmerge, filter, fitColumn, insertLink actions were added in v5.0

Related sample: Spreadsheet. Actions