hey!

pub/sub abstraction layer for AngularJS to make managing your events easier

hey aims to make dealing with events in AngularJS a little bit easier when you require more functionality like destroying event listeners or only listening for a particular event one time

listening for events

---

Listening for events is pretty straight forward, simply use the listen() method and pass in the name of the event and an event handler to be called.

angular.module('example', ['hey'])
  .controller('ExampleCtrl', function (hey) {

    function doSomething () {
      console.log('something happened!');
    }

    hey.listen('contrived.event', doSomething);

  });

listen() simply wraps $rootScope.$on so you can also use hey to manage native angular events as well.

If you'd prefer not to use $rootScope and to use a child $scope instead, you can pass in a $scope as a third optional argument.

angular.module('example', ['hey'])
  .controller('ExampleCtrl', function (hey, $scope) {

    function doSomething () {
      console.log('something happened!');
    }

    hey.listen('contrived.event', doSomething, $scope);

  });

destroying events

---

One of the more tedious things about using angular's native event system is when you want to destroy an event. This is the real problem hey aims to solve, it allows you to easily destroy events following the same patterns used in popular libraries like jQuery.

angular.module('example', ['hey'])
  .controller('DestroyExampleCtrl', function (hey, $scope) {

    function doSomething () {
      console.log('something happened!');
    }

    hey.listen('contrived.event', doSomething);

    $scope.destroyEvent = function () {
      hey.stop('contrived.event', doSomething);
    };

  });

You can also use it to remove any and all handlers associated with a particular event by simply not passing in an event handler

angular.module('example', ['hey'])
  .controller('DestroyExampleCtrl', function (hey, $scope) {

    function doSomething () {
      console.log('something happened!');
    }

    function doSomethingElse () {
      console.log('something else happened!');
    }

    hey.listen('contrived.event', doSomething);
    hey.listen('contrived.event', doSomethingElse)


    $scope.destroyAllTheThings = function () {
      hey.stop('contrived.event');
    };

  });

once

---

One convenience I miss from libraries like jQuery/Backbone is the ability to specify that a listener should only listen one time then die

angular.module('example', ['hey'])
  .controller('OnceCtrl', function (hey) {

    hey.once('contrived.event', function () {
      console.log('There can only be one!');
    });

  });