Basic save button question

Question

Hi
I am new to apex and im try to figure out how a save button works.
it is on a page where employee details can be updated and if you enter a leave date and click save an email is sent.
The save button is in the buttons area of the page definition - :) not suprisingly
there is a send leaver notification in the processes
but i cant find the code that triggers the process within the button.
Probably a basic question
thanlks in advance.

Answer 1

as the button is called SUBMIT does this then create the link?Not really.
The button name alone isn't what determines that it has the ability to kick off a process (although if you created it with a wizard in Apex it might have defaulted or suggested that name to you).
You can call the button "Jabberwocky" or "Gobbledygook" if you want and it still will perform a submit action of some kind if it does not call a URL and it does not call a redirect to another page in the app directly in the button definition. If it doesn't do either of those, it will therefore perform a submit action (regardless of the actual button name).
In summary, a button will do one of three things:
1. redirect to any URL
2. redirect to a page in the app (which is really just a special variation of redirecting to a URL)
3. perform a submit action (this is the default if it does neither #1 nor #2).
Does that make sense? So if you look at a button and it does not redirect to a URL or page in the app, it therefore must be doing a submit of some kind.
Then, over in the processes, these will execute if a submit was done and the process is either unconditional or is conditional and the conditions are met. These will fire in the order of the sequence numbers on the processes. These processes are not fired for a URL redirect nor a page app redirect.
Finally, a branch fires after the processes. A branch isn't quite a redirect but more of a "after i'm done processing what control should I return back to the user?" thing.
However, only ONE branch at most will fire. Apex will look at them in the order of the sequence numbers and fire the soonest of the unconditional branches or the conditional branches for which the conditions are met. The first one found eligible to fire will fire and the others will be ignored.
Note that if you have no branches at all or you have conditional branches and the conditions aren't met on any of them:
1. Before apex v4.0 you will get an error (e.g.: page xxx provided no page to branch to), as it expects to find a branch to fire.
2. Apex 4.0 and up will implicitly default to branching to the same page so you won't get an error, however you don't have control of the other branch settings either such as whether or not to display the process success message, clear a cache, etc.