Prefix Emitter

Simple Event Emitter for ES6 and TypeScript based on Prefix Tree

Prefix Emitter is a small library (1.3KB min+gz) with functionality like Node's Event Emitter. But event listeners can be subscribed to any predefined sequence of anguments (topic) instead of single event name.

Key Features

• Hierarchical event system (topics)
• Subscribing to and unsubscribing from events by using Decorators
• Typed events for usage with TypeScript
• Small size
• Zero dependencies

Example

import { PrefixEmitter } from "prefix-emitter";

let emitter = new PrefixEmitter();

// subscribe to events
let subscription1 = emitter.on((...args[]) => {
  console.log("global interceptor:", args);
});
let subscription2 = emitter.on("/topic", (event, arg) => {
  console.log("topic interceptor:", event, arg);
});
let subscription3 = emitter.on("/topic", "/event", (agr) => {
  console.log("event listener:", arg);
});

// emit an event
emitter.emit("/topic", "/event", 123);
// ➜ global interceptor: ["/topic", "/event", 123]
// ➜ topic interceptor: "/event", 123
// ➜ event listener: 123

// unsubscribe from events
subscription1.dispose();
subscription2.dispose();
subscription3.dispose();

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Installation and Requirements

Package supports installation as ES6 module or simply with <script> tag (through global variable named PrefixEmitter).

<script src="node_modules/prefix-emitter/dist/prefix-emitter.min.js"></script>

Prefix Emitter can be used with NodeJS 4 and above or any ES5 compatible browser including IE9+ and Safari 7. But internally it uses ES6 Map with simple fallback based on object for ES5. So if ES6 Map is not supported (and polyfill is not used) then event prefixes should be strings or numbers. Otherwise event prefix could be an object (if you need such strange case).

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Documentation

Basic usage

We can choose any sequence of arguments (even empty) and subscribe event handler to it:

PrefixEmitter.on()

const emitter = new PrefixEmitter();
const subscription = emitter.on("arg1", "arg2", "arg3", (arg4) => { console.log(arg4); });

Then we could trigger any events:

PrefixEmitter.emit()

emitter.emit("arg1", "arg2", "arg3", "foo");   // ➜ "foo"
emitter.emit("arg1", "arg2", "arg3", "bar");   // ➜ "bar"
emitter.emit("some", "other", "event", "baz"); // ➜

And then we should unsubscribe from events:

Subscription.dispose()

subscription.dispose();

Or we could use self-disposing subscription that will be destroyed after one call:

PrefixEmitter.once()

const subscription = emitter.once("event", (arg) => {
  console.log("[subscription is dispoised]", arg);
});

emitter.emit("event", "foo"); // ➜ [subscription is dispoised], "foo"
emitter.emit("event", "bar"); // ➜

Decorators

Methods of some class can be marked as event listeners by using @on and @once Method Decprators. Then subscriptions will be created by injectSubscriptions utility function and disposed by disposeSubscriptions function. See example:

import { on, once, injectSubscriptions, disposeSubscriptions, PrefixEmitter } from "prefix-emitter";

const emitter = new PrefixEmitter();

class Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    injectSubscriptions(this);
  }
  
  componentWillUnmount() {
    disposeSubscriptions(this);
  }
  
  @on(emitter, "first")
  onFirstEvent(arg) { }
  
  @once(emitter, "second")
  onSecondEvent(arg) { }
}

Also existing subscriptions can be passed to injectSubscriptions function as second parameter:

const emitter = new PrefixEmitter();

class Component {
  constructor() {
    injectSubscriptions(this, [
      emitter.on("first", this.onFirstEvent.bind(this)),
      emitter.once("second", this.onSecondEvent.bind(this)),
    ]);
  }
  
  dispose() {
    disposeSubscriptions(this);
  }
  
  onFirstEvent(arg) { }
  
  onSecondEvent(arg) { }
}

Typed Emitters

For TypeScript there are three predefined generic Event Emitter interfaces:

VoidEmitter

Emitter without any arguments. Can simply trigger subscriptions.

import { VoidEmitter, PrefixEmitter } from "prefix-emitter";

const emitter: VoidEmitter = new PrefixEmitter();

const sub = emitter.on(() => { console.log("fired!"); });

SingleEmitter

Emitter with one argument (or event).

import { SingleEmitter, PrefixEmitter } from "prefix-emitter";

const emitter: SingleEmitter<string> = new PrefixEmitter();

const sub1 = emitter.on("event", () => { console.log("event fired!"); });
const sub2 = emitter.on((arg: string) => { console.log(arg + "fired!"); });

DoubleEmitter

Emitter with two arguments (or prefixes).

import { DoubleEmitter, PrefixEmitter } from "prefix-emitter";

const emitter: DoubleEmitter<string, number> = new PrefixEmitter();

const sub2 = emitter.on((event: string, arg: number) => { console.log(event, arg); });
const sub2 = emitter.on("event", (arg: number) => { console.log("[event]", arg); });
const sub3 = emitter.on("event", 123, () => { console.log("[event, 123]"); });

Tips

PrefixEmitter calls all listeners synchronously.

If you want define asynchronous listener, you could wrap its body to setImmediate() or some asap() function.

emitter.on("event", (arg) => {
  setImmediate(() => { 
    // event listener body
  });
});

If you want emit some event asynchronously, you can do such thing:

let a = 1, b = 2, c = 3;
// store argument values
const args = [a, b, c];
setImmediate(() => { emitter.emit(...args); });
// arguments can be changed like after synchronous `emit`
a = 4; b = 5;

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Usage in global scope

For usage in browser (without module loaders) the package registers global variable named PerfixEmitter.

And the class PerfixEmitter has an alias named Emitter.

<script src="/{path_to_vendor_scrpts}/prefix-emitter.js"></script>

const { Emitter, on, once, injectSubscriptions, disposeSubscriptions } = PrefixEmitter;

const myEmitter = new Emitter();

Benchmarks

To run benchmarks please type npm run benchmarks in console or open ./benchmark.html in browser.