Documentation Set for Swarm 2.2
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# Action

## Name

Action -- An action type that has been customized for direct execution by an action interpreter.

## Description

Action is a common supertype of all action types which may be created within an action plan. Each action is always controlled by a single action plan to which it belongs. This action plan is referred to as its owner. Given the action object, its owner plan may be obtained using the inherited getOwner message.

Actions are allocated in the same zone as their owner plan, and may be created only using one of the createAction messages on an ActionGroup or Schedule. Each of these messages returns the action that was created as its return value. Actions in an action plan may also be obtained by processing the plan using any of its messages inherited from its underlying collection. Actions may also be removed from an action plan using a remove message on the underlying collection.

(.. Note: currently, an action cannot be removed while it is currently being executed. This means that the function or message called by an action cannot itself remove that same action from its action plan. This restriction will be removed in the future.)

Separate subtypes of Action are defined for each of the various forms of createAction messages that create them. The current representation of these actions will be undergoing change as support for their parameter and return types is migrated into more basic support from the defobj library. Each action type provides messages to retrieve and set the values of all argument values bound into the action. These capabilities will remain, but different messages will eventually be supported. This documentation will be completed once the messages supported on Action types are finalized.

## Protocols adopted by Action

Create Drop GetOwner

## Methods

### Phase: Using

- - (void)_performAction_: (id <Activity>)activity

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