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# Action FAQs

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## What is an Action?

An Action is a sitemap component that manipulates runtime parameters based on request and application state. An Action's result is available in the sitemap as map of name/value pairs. Detailed information on actions may be found in Creating and Using Actions.

## Why does Cocoon return an error when I add an action to a pipeline?

The pipeline was working fine before the action was added. After the change, Cocoon seems unable to find the file specified in the variable that is returned by the matcher.

    <map:match pattern="*">
      <map:act type="validate-session">
        <map:generate type="serverpages" src="{../1}.xsp"/>
      </map:act>
      <map:serialize/>
    </map:match>

Please note in the above example the "`../1`".

Map objects returned from matchers and actions are organised hierarchically. Therefore, old map objects are not replaced by new ones, such as the map objects returned by the validate-session action above. Because older map objects are still accessible through a path expression, new ones are accessed differently. Here "`../1`" references key ( or "variable") "1" in the next to last Map.

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