Re: ECMAScript binding for EventListener

Everyone,

Since I started this thread, let me summarize some of the responses.

I had proposed the following:

 	element.addEventListener("click",
 		   { 
 		      message: "Hello world",
 		      handleEvent: function(e) { alert(this.message); }
                   },
 		   false);

Johnny Stenback wrote to say that recent (0.9.1?) Mozilla versions and
Netscape 6.1 beta already support this usage.  I'd be interested to know
whether the rationale for implementing this was the same as the one I
gave, and I wonder whether the fact that it is implemented will lend any
weight to the idea of formalizing it in for the Level 3 Events spec...

Jeff Yates also responded with the following brilliant piece of code:

    function objectEventHandler( object, methodName, element){
	element.addEventListener( "click", function(evt){
		object[methodName](evt);
	    },
	    false );
    }

This code relies on a nested function literal (and the closure that goes
along with it to save its scope) to hold on to the reference to the
object on which the method is to be called.  Very cool.  If it were me,
I'd rewrite it like this, to change the outer method name, to use a
funciton reference instead of a method name, and to use Function.call
(part of JavaScript 1.5, and ECMAScript v3):

 function registerEventListener(element, eventtype, object, func, captures) {
     element.addEventListener(eventtype,
			      function(e) { func.call(object, e); }
 }                            captures);

I haven't tested this, but you should at least get the idea.  Thanks
Jeff!

Jim Ley wrote that my proposal is unnecessary because it could just be
replaced with:

   element.addEventListener("click", ({ message: "Hello world",
   handleEvent: function(e) { alert(this.message); } }).handleEvent,
   false);

Unfortunately, this misses the point.  I believe that this syntax still
just registers a function, and that function will be invoked in such a
way that the this keyword refers to the event target, or (depending on
implementation) to the global object, or is undefined.  When the
function is called, "this.message" will not resolve the way we want it
to.

	David Flanagan

Received on Friday, 15 June 2001 13:11:14 UTC