How to get the flag/state of current operation in Odoo 9?

I am new in odoo, I want to know how we get the current flag/state of every operation.

For example: when we create a new record how do we know the current flag/state is "add"? or when we view a record how do we know the current flag/state is "view"?

It something like current user id that stored in session named "uid", is there something similar to get the current flag/state in every operation?