Comments on: Smartypants-ioc and As3-signals example

By: as3signals tutorial | Color Hook

as3signals tutorial | Color Hook — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:18:47 +0000

[...] Smartypants-ioc Smartypants-ioc and As3-signals example [...]

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:42:09 +0000

Robert, I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

By: Robert Penner

Robert Penner — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:12:23 +0000

The other difference would be the reduction in the number of classes by eliminating the commands and events.

By: Robert Penner

Robert Penner — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:11:08 +0000

What I’d love to see is a version of Flexcaster with Robotlegs without the CommandMap, using Signals and controllers instead. I think the main difference from this version would be the mediators.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:31:45 +0000

I forgot to mention that I like the changes. Thanks, Robert.

By: Nek

Nek — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:23:11 +0000

Hey. I really like your reasoning on events overuse.
I was walking in circles around the idea of using signals with DI. Though my lack of experience stopped me from implementing it.
Thanks for making it clear for the rest of us.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:29:23 +0000

Thanks, Robert. I’ve made those changes.

By: Robert Penner

Robert Penner — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:19:06 +0000

Another minor change that will require search and replace in your code: Signal no longer has a target property or constructor argument. Signal doesn’t have a use for target like DeluxeSignal and NativeSignal do.

By: Robert Penner

Robert Penner — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:17:21 +0000

I made yet more changes that move further away from events. Inspired by your example, I removed the “event” terminology and now Signal dispatches “value objects”, validated by “value classes”.

I enabled the Signal to define any number of value classes in the constructor:

public function Signal(…valueClasses)

dispatch() still sends variable args but it’s cleaner:

public function dispatch(…valueObjects):void

Inside dispatch(), the valueClasses Array is used to check each item in valueObjects.

Conceptually, Signal is now a multicast delegate that can define a function signature. AS3 doesn’t give us compile-time type safety for the signature but Signal does validation at run-time: dispatch() will blow up quickly if the wrong value objects are passed. But the strictness is opt-in.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:27:09 +0000

Thanks Robert. I’ve changed the project to use the new names.