2

I've recently changed to Mate as a framework for flex. However am running into a few issues. I want to know how to dispatch events from classes generated via the methodInvoker tag.

<resultHandlers>
        <MethodInvoker generator="{LoginSuccess}" method="setCurrentUser" arguments="{[resultObject]}"/>

Then in the class I'd like to dispatch an event.

public function setCurrentUser(calUser:Object):void{
        if(calUser != null){
            Model.instance.currentUser = calUser as CalUser;
            loadOnlineCalendars(Model.instance.currentUser);
        }
    }

    public function loadOnlineCalendars(calUser:CalUser):void{
        for(var i:int = 0 ; i<calUser.calConnectors.length; i++){//logic here
            dispatchEvent(new CalConnectorEvent(calUser.calConnectors as CalConnector,CalConnectorEvent.LOAD_ONLINE_CALENDAR_EVENT,true));
        }
    }

The problem is I can't seem to be able to catch the event in the eventMap or even in the application root.

If anyone has any experience with Mate, I'd appreciate some pointers. Perhaps I'm doing this all wrong. I just want to get a result from the server - look at the result and depending on the result contact the server again. Should be quite simple.

Event Map: 

            <resultHandlers>
            <MethodInvoker generator="{LoginSuccess}" method="setCurrentUser" arguments="{[resultObject]}"/>
            <ServiceResponseAnnouncer type="result"/>

            </resultHandlers>
            <faultHandlers>
            <ServiceResponseAnnouncer type="fault"/>

            </faultHandlers>
    </RemoteObjectInvoker>

user17510
  • 1,549
  • 5
  • 20
  • 37

3 Answers3

7

The way it's usually done is to inject the event map's dispatcher into the object:

<MethodInvoker generator="{MyClass}" method="someMethod" arguments="{[a, b]}">
  <Properties dispatcher="{scope.dispatcher}"/>
</MethodInvoker>

The inner Properties tag sets properties on the object being created by the MethodInvoker, and the properties are guaranteed to be set before the method is invoked.

The class obviously needs to have a public property called dispatcher (or whatever name you prefer) for this to work. To dispatch events that you want to listen for in the event map call dispatcher.dispatchEvent(...).

If the object created by the MethodInvoker will be used more than once, if it's a manager, say, the common idiom is to create it using an ObjectBuilder is an event handler block that gets triggered by FlexEvent.INITIALIZE:

<EventHandlers type="{FlexEvent.INITIALIZE}">
  <ObjectBuilder generator="{MyClass}" constructorArguments="{scope.dispatcher}"/>
</EventHandlers>

In this example the event dispatcher is injected as a constructor argument, but you can use an inner Properties tag just as with MethodInvoker.

Theo
  • 131,503
  • 21
  • 160
  • 205
  • However, there is not really a way to to use the Mate CallBack with the global dispatcher, right. I mean, what the CallBack will return to will be the global dispatcher instance, and not the instance of the dispatcher's invoker, for example a view model, or a manager. – xantrus May 26 '11 at 07:15
4

After some digging around here, I found that you can't call an event from a non-view class. That forum post describes the elegant solution, and also offers a quick workaround:

Application.application.dispatchEvent(new CalConnectorEvent(calUser.calConnectors as CalConnector,CalConnectorEvent.LOAD_ONLINE_CALENDAR_EVENT,true));

But check out the forum post- there's a lot of meat in there.

Mike Sickler
  • 33,662
  • 21
  • 64
  • 90
  • Thanks for that Mike. I've added the closing tag. So should I be able to listen to events dispatch from classes generated via the methodInvoker tag from within the same map? – user17510 Jan 27 '09 at 03:30
  • Nice one. That makes sense. I've used that style before but when sending an event from an item renderer. Anyway, thanks. – user17510 Jan 27 '09 at 05:28
  • 1
    I wrote that forum post (#2 from the top) and this solution is an ugly hack and I strongly discourage anyone to use it. Look for my answer to this question, or read the full forum post, where you will find a more robust solution. – Theo Jan 27 '09 at 08:16
  • You're right, Theo- I should have been more clear in the answer that the code block above is a quick-and-dirty hack. – Mike Sickler Jan 27 '09 at 13:15
  • Thanks a lot mate... was struggling for 4 hours to figure out this issue. – Kevin Dec 15 '09 at 15:44
0

From the class in actionscript you can dispatch events. For that it has to either extend the EventDispatcher class or use some dispatcher property and implement the IEventInterface. But that is not the proper way because the event will not be bubbled, since bubbling is a property specific to display objects. You can listen to the event in the class itself during the target phase. If you want other nodes to listen to the event it has to bubble. So as Theo has answered you have to pass the dispatcher of the mate framework to the class. Now you can dispatch the event from the class. This is probably the best way to dispatch events from the data classes. For more info refer to this link http://www.developria.com/2010/05/pass-the-eventdispatcher-pleas.html

nitin
  • 75
  • 1
  • 12