Actions and properties

Actions give life to the app. They save data, charge credit cards, sign the user up, send emails, connect to external services, show elements, etc.

Workflows and their respective actions belong in the Workflow tab. This is where you give Bubble instructions on what should happen in response to events.

Each workflow starts with an event (trigger), followed by one or more actions that tell Bubble what to do.

Example:

Event → Action(s)
Button click → Create a new database thing

This section covers all of the actions in the core library and their respective parameters.

Action steps

Note: While workflows are designed as a linear sequence, the actual execution order can vary. Some actions run in the browser, others on the server, and some on both. When a workflow mixes these types, actions may not fire in the exact order they appear. You can read more about the order in which actions are triggered in the article section below.

Article section: The order in which actions are triggered

Actions run in the order they appear in the workflow, and each is assigned a step number based on its position in the sequence. This number serves two purposes: it gives you a visual reference for the action's position, and it lets you reference the output of a previous step using Result of step [...].

Each action in a workflow is assigned a step number, shown as Step 1, Step 2, and so on.

This number gives you a visual cue of the action's number, and also makes it possible to refer to a previous action for information.

Referring to data from previous steps

Many actions refer to a data source to perform their task. For example, the Make changes to the current user action references a thing in the database of type user. You can refer to the data from a previous action by using the data source Result of step [...].

Button → Action 1 (Make changes to current user) → Action 2 (Result of step 1's First name)

In this example, step 1 writes changes to the current user in the database. Step 2 can then reference that same user using Result of step 1.

Action-specific properties

Category	Web/mobile	Description	Link
Account	Both	Actions related to user accounts.	Account
Navigation	Web	Actions related to web-specific navigation.	Navigation (web)
Navigation	Mobile	Actions related to mobile-specific navigation.	Navigation (mobile)
Data (things)	Both	Actions related to the database.	Data (Things)
Elements	Both	Actions related to elements.	Elements
Email and notifications	Both	Actions related to sending emails and push notifications.	Email and notifications
Native mobile actions	Mobile	Mobile-specific actions	Native mobile
Custom actions	Both	Actions related to triggering/scheduling custom events and reacting to database changes.	Custom
Bubble-made plugin actions	Web	Actions related to plugins made by Bubble.	Bubble-made plugins
In-app purchase actions	Mobile	Actions related to mobile in-app purchase actions (iOS and Android)	In-app purchase actions