The Generic Event Object¶
The base Event
class provided
by the EventDispatcher component is deliberately sparse to allow the creation
of API specific event objects by inheritance using OOP. This allows for
elegant and readable code in complex applications.
The GenericEvent
is available
for convenience for those who wish to use just one event object throughout
their application. It is suitable for most purposes straight out of the
box, because it follows the standard observer pattern where the event object
encapsulates an event ‘subject’, but has the addition of optional extra
arguments.
GenericEvent
adds some more
methods in addition to the base class
Event
__construct()
: Constructor takes the event subject and any arguments;getSubject()
: Get the subject;setArgument()
: Sets an argument by key;setArguments()
: Sets arguments array;getArgument()
: Gets an argument by key;getArguments()
: Getter for all arguments;hasArgument()
: Returns true if the argument key exists;
The GenericEvent
also implements ArrayAccess
on the event
arguments which makes it very convenient to pass extra arguments regarding
the event subject.
The following examples show use-cases to give a general idea of the flexibility. The examples assume event listeners have been added to the dispatcher.
Passing a subject:
use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\GenericEvent;
$event = new GenericEvent($subject);
$dispatcher->dispatch($event, 'foo');
class FooListener
{
public function handler(GenericEvent $event)
{
if ($event->getSubject() instanceof Foo) {
// ...
}
}
}
Passing and processing arguments using the ArrayAccess
API to
access the event arguments:
use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\GenericEvent;
$event = new GenericEvent(
$subject,
['type' => 'foo', 'counter' => 0]
);
$dispatcher->dispatch($event, 'foo');
class FooListener
{
public function handler(GenericEvent $event)
{
if (isset($event['type']) && $event['type'] === 'foo') {
// ... do something
}
$event['counter']++;
}
}
Filtering data:
use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\GenericEvent;
$event = new GenericEvent($subject, ['data' => 'Foo']);
$dispatcher->dispatch($event, 'foo');
class FooListener
{
public function filter(GenericEvent $event)
{
$event['data'] = strtolower($event['data']);
}
}