Basic usage
Introduction
As you already saw in previous chapters, an action is what you use to instruct the CLI what it should do. All actions have a few common characteristics which, once understood, will let you use and interact with any action that is currently available in Nebulant and actions that will be added in the future.
The very first rule is that there can only be one Start action. This action isn't available in the left bar, the place where every other action can be found. This action is automatically placed in the blueprint when the blueprint itself is being created, and it cannot be deleted or duplicated.
All other actions must be connected either directly to the Start action, or indirectly to it, by being connected to another action that is connected to it.
If an action (or a group of actions) is not connected by any means to the Start action, it will be ignored when the blueprint is exported.
Ports
All actions have connection points, called ports, that are used to connect actions. Each action has exactly one IN port and zero or more OUT ports. The number of OUT ports depends on the particular capabilities of each action. Connecting ports, as already shown in the videos in previous chapters, is performed by clicking (without releasing) on an OUT port and dragging the cursor to an IN port.
IN ports are blue. OUT ports have different colors depending on their purpose. The most common ones are the green ports, also called OK ports, and the red ports, also called KO ports.
Any OUT port can be connected to any IN port, except to the IN port of the action that the OUT port belongs to. Said with other words: you can't connect an action to itself, because that would result in an unbreakable infinite loop.
Settings
Almost all actions perform some sort of task that requires a kind of settings values. For example, the Log action, which prints a string to stdout, requires you to provide the string you want to be printed. You do this by typing it in the settings dialog of the action.
As shown in previous chapters, the settings dialog can be opened with a right click or a double click on the action.
Providers
Actions are grouped by providers. They can be found in the left sidebar. There are two general purpose providers called Execution control and Generic. Besides these two, which will be further explained in the following chapters, there are multiple other providers. Each provider covers functionalities for a specific services provider. Just to name a few examples of services providers: AWS, Google Cloud, Cloudflare.
Each provider will, most likely, require further configuration (setting access credentials, tokens, profiles, etc...). You can find further information on how to configure each provider in the Providers section.
Let's continue to the next chapter, where you'll find out how to control the execution flow!
