listen-up

A fast and lightweight event emitter. Supports regular expression event subscriptions and group listener removal.

Inspired strongly by https://github.com/HenrikJoreteg/wildemitter (especially the concept of "groups") so thanks to @HenrikJoreteg and @andyet.

• Very lightweight (and fast)
• Browser and node.js support (browser support with Browserify or similar tool)
• Standard event emitter functionality (i.e. on, off, emit)
• Single event handler registration with once
• Handler grouping and bulk removal with releaseGroup
• *Supports factory and mixin patterns for greater flexibility
• *Support for regex event matching
• *Consistent arguments passed to handlers regardless of registration method

*features not in WildEmitter

Install

npm install listen-up

Creating emitters

require('listen-up')([subjectObject])

Returns a new emitter or the subject object with emitter functionality mixed in.

var makeEmitter = require('listen-up');
 
// Create an emitter object
var emitter = makeEmitter();
 
// Create an object as an emitter
var jim = makeEmitter({ name:'Jim' });
 
// Make an existing object an emitter
var jake = { name:'Jake' };
makeEmitter(jake);
 
// Mixin in a constructor
function Person(name) {
    this.name = name;
    makeEmitter(this);
}

Usage

// People can be emitters too :)
function Person(name) {
    this.name = name;
    require('listen-up')(this);
}
 
// Emit events when changes occur
Person.prototype.change = function(name) {
    this.name = name;
    this.emit('change:name', name);
}
 
var jim = new Person('Jim');
 
// Listen for a specific event
jim.on('change:name', function(e, name) {
    console.log('"change:name" handler called with:', name);
});
 
// Listen for all 'change:*' events
jim.on(/^change:/, function(e, name) {
    console.log('"change:*" handler called with:', name);
});
 
// Only listen for the first '*:name' event
jim.once(/:name$/, function(e, name) {
    console.log('"*:name" handler called with:', name);
});
 
// This call will trigger all three handlers
jim.change('James');
 
// Remove handlers for the 'change:name' event 
// (removes only the first of the above handlers)
jim.off('change:name');
 
// Use groups when adding listeners...
jim .on('change:name', 'ui-listeners', function() {...})
    .on('change:age',  'ui-listeners', function() {...})
    .on('sync',        'ui-listeners', function() {...});
 
// ...and they can all be removed with a single call.
jim.releaseGroup('ui-listeners');

Emitter API

All emitter methods return the object on which they were called so that you can chain multiple method calls.

emitter.on(event[, group], handler)

Adds an event listener to the emitter. If the event argument is a regular expression then it will be used to match against event names.

Arguments:

• event: (String|RegExp) used to identify which events should trigger this handler
• group: (Optional String) can be used to remove many related handlers at once
• handler: (Function) the function to call when a matching event is emitted

require('listen-up')()
    .on('test', log)  // Listen for 'test' events
    .on(/^foo:/, log) // Listen for 'foo:*' events
    .emit('test')     // Logs 'test'
    .emit('test')     // Logs 'test'
    .emit('foo:bar')  // Logs 'foo:bar'
    .emit('foo:bat')  // Logs 'foo:bat'
    .emit('boo:far'); // Logs nothing

emitter.once(event[, group], handler)

Adds an event listener but immediately removes the handler the first time it is triggered.

Arguments:

• event: (String|RegExp) used to identify which events should trigger this handler
• group: (Optional String) can be used to remove many related handlers at once
• handler: (Function) the function to call when a matching event is emitted

require('listen-up')()
    .once('test', log)  // Listen for one 'test' event
    .once(/^foo:/, log) // Listen for one 'foo:*' event
    .emit('test')       // Logs 'test'
    .emit('test')       // Logs nothing
    .emit('foo:bar')    // Logs 'foo:bar'
    .emit('foo:bar');   // Logs nothing

emitter.off(event[, handler])

Removes handlers for the given event, optionally specifying a specific handler to remove. If handler is not passed then all handlers are removed. If a regular expression is passed as event, only listeners added with an identical regular expression are removed. The regex is not executed to match events for removal.

Arguments:

• event: (String|RegExp) used to identify which event's listeners to remove
• handler: (Optional: Function) if specified then only listeners with this function as a handler will be removed

function log2() { return log.apply(this, arguments); }
 
require('listen-up')()
    .on('foo:bar', log)  // Listen for 'foo:bar' events
    .on('foo:bar', log2) // Another listener for 'foo:bar' events
    .on(/^foo:/, log)    // Listen for 'foo:*' events
    .emit('foo:bar')     // Logs 'foo:bar' three times
    
    .off('foo:bar', log) // Remove the first handler
    .emit('foo:bar')     // Logs 'foo:bar' twice
    
    .off(/^foo:/)        // Remove the last handler
    .emit('foo:bar')     // Logs 'foo:bar' once
    
    .off('foo:bar')      // Remove the remaining handler
    .emit('foo:bar');    // Logs nothing!

emitter.releaseGroup(group)

Removes all event handlers added with the specified group.

Arguments:

• group: (String) remove all listens associated with this group

require('listen-up')()
    .on('test', 'mine', log)    // Add 3 listeners in the same group
    .on(/^foo:/, 'mine', log)
    .on('foo:bar', 'mine', log)
    .releaseGroup('mine')       // Remove all three handlers
    .emit('foo:bar');           // Logs nothing

emitter.emit(event[, data...])

Emits an event and calls the handlers on all matching listeners. Additional data can be passed as arguments and they will be forwarded to handlers.

Arguments:

• event: (String) the event

require('listen-up')()
    .on(/^foo:/, log)              // Listen for 'foo:*' events
    .emit('foo:bar')               // Logs 'foo:bar'
    .emit('foo:bar', 'bag')        // Logs 'foo:bar', 'bag'
    .emit('foo:bar', 'baz', 'bat') // Logs 'foo:bar', 'baz', 'bat'
    .emit('boo:far');              // Logs nothing