Creating an event
What's that timmy? You're exposing your API to someone else, and they want convient handy-dandy events?! No problem! As with everything in Boo, its dead simple to get up and running within moments with the event keyword.
class Clicker:
event Clicked as EventHandler
def RaiseClick():
Clicked(self, null)
Aww, yeah! Now you can use it like any other event!
p = Clicker()
p.Clicked += def(sender, args):
print "Tah CLICKED!"
p.RaiseClick()
(it prints out "Tah CLICKED!" if you're curious)
By now you're probably wondering what "EventHandler" is. In .NET, they are commonly referred to as delegates, a type of event that can be subscribed to by multiple functions, as long as each function has the same method signature as the delegate. An "event" is a special kind of delegate that has some rules:
- It can't be called from outside its declaring class.
This keeps sneaky coders from invoking an event from somewhere else and potentially messing things up. Leaky boats are bad!
Suppose, though, you want a ham sandwich on rye, or you want to expose a unique kind of event that has its own unique arguments. Here's another code sample to whet your apetite:
import System class Sandwich: //object - sandwich eaten. //bool - if there are leftovers. event Eaten as callable(object, bool) //The two codes of line below are //the equivilent of the one line of code above! event Eating as EatingEvent //object -- sandwiich being eaten. //string -- the kind of sammich being eaten. callable EatingEvent(sammich as object, type as string) def Eat(): Eating(self, "Turkey sammich.") Eaten(self, false) turkeyAndSwiss = Sandwich() turkeyAndSwiss.Eating += def(obj, sammich): print "You're eating a ${sammich}! It must be good." turkeyAndSwiss.Eaten += def(obj, leftovers): print "You", ("didn't leave me anything?!","left leftovers! How sweet!")[leftovers] turkeyAndSwiss.Eat()