I'm aware that's it very common to use this as much as possible when writing ActionScript 3 code (http://www.daveoncode.com/2009/01/07/we-should-always-use-actionscripts-this-keyword/).
But what should be done if you're writing anonymous functions, which don't have appropriate this matching.
x.addEventListener(Event.WHATEVER, function(event:*) {
// When this callback fires, there is a fail:
// because there is no 'this' at this point.
// INVALID!
this.someAction();
});
I saw some recommendations on writing something like:
var self = this;
and then using self in the code of your anonymous functions, but this seems weird.
What's your opinion on this question (for example, do you have something about it in your coding standard)?
Since you're using anonymous function, there is no this (per se).
By defining self you are defining a local scope variable that can be then called by reference... personally, I don't like the practice.
Do you have a specific reason for using anonymous functions over named functions? To quote Grant Skinner:
in almost every case, the use of an
anonymous function in your code
indicates an architectural problem.
There are almost no real uses for
anonymous functions – they are less
efficient, much harder to debug, and
far harder to grok when reading code.
Here is an interesting discussion about functions and scope from Mike Chamber's blog:
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/10/08/function-closures-and-this-in-actionscript-3/
If you scroll down near the bottom of the comments you can find Grant's response.
We have a similar approach (so this isn't an answer as much as it is affirmation of your approach):
public class myClass extends EventDispatcher{
public function foo() : void {
var thisObject : myClass = this;
this.addEventListener(EVENT, function(event : Event) : void {
thisObject.foo_internal();
}, false, 0, true);
}
protected function foo_interal() : void {
}
}
Of course, the purist might say that you shouldn't be adding listeners in a manner that prevents you from removing them! That said, we use this convention in other places where we use inner functions outside the context of a listener.
Edited: Ah - my bad, I misunderstood. I typically don't refer to this unless it's a self-contained action, etc. Using self or something similar provides a means for other methods to access it. I personally approach development from this standard, for removing listeners, etc..
Hope that helps a little.
You can either use methods so "this" will be fixed to the instance, or stop using "this" so Flash Player will search the scope chain. I prefer letting Flash Player search the scope chain because I think code with "this" everywhere is hard to read.
Related
I recently came across this issue. For a project I'm working on, we were using .bind() way too often and it actually hit the performance quite hard considering that we only have 16ms for the rendering loop to do things.
So I did some jsperf and noticed that calling a bound function (besides of the extra garbage) is way slower than calling an unbound function or using .call on a function.
I literally changed every piece of code to avoid bindings and to use .call/.apply instead. Ding this i not only spawned less functions but also increased the performance of my app a great deal.
However, I was unsatisfied with this and wrote a new way of binding functions.
https://github.com/SebastianNette/FastBind
This is overwriting the native bind method with a .call/.apply approach.
And it runs 96% faster.
Doing some testings on nodejs is came to these results:
Calling a bound function is 20 times slower than calling an unbound function.
Calling a bound function with my own approach takes only 2 times the time of the unbound call.
So I was wondering what is wrong with the native binding function. Why does it behave like that? And which would be the best way to deal with that issue.
Most of my app code is now written like that:
var scope = this;
this.boundFn = function(a,b,c) { return scope.fn(a,b,c); };
Or even
this.callback = fn;
this.context = context;
this.callback.call(this.context);
I do prefer the latter because it doesn't spawn any new functions. However, sometimes I just do have to bind. (handlers, timers, etc).
My educated guess is that it makes a clone of the object you are using but replaces the underlying prototype of object. Instead of using a generic precompiled object from the page rendered code it now has to take two things:
The passed variable thats to be come this. analyse it, clone it. then inject the specified function thats to be called into the new object. Then execute the function in the new object. afterwards if no longer called clean it up.
The more complex and more scoping loops an object has the long the bind will take because the engine needs to traverse the scope tree of all functions and parameters to see what needs to be copied.
You are already using scoping, which I strongly advice. It is less memory intense and the engine does not have to copy the objects and then call the functions. And you get the added benefit that you can access properties from both objects.
In my experience binding is never truly needed. Just use setters and getters for properties, otherwise the scoped variables won't always change in the main object.
Take for example this snippet
function domagic() {
this.myproperty = "Hello ";
}
domagic.prototype = {
perform:function(){
var that = this;
var hello = "World";
setTimeout(function(){
// this in this contect is whatever runs timeout. not domagic
// I use this for jQuery and my own objects to get best
// of both worlds, but I always post a comment in a scope
// to remind myself what this and that refers to.
window.alert(that.myproperty+hello);
that.set("Goodbye ");
},2000);
},
set : function(what) {
this.myproperty = what;
}
};
magic = new domagic();
magic.perform();
setTimeout(function(){magic.perform();},2000);
Mootools classes have an initialize() method that's called when a new object is instantiated.
It seems that setup() is a commonly used method as well.
Most classes I've observed call this.setup() from initialize() and nowhere else, which has left me wondering:
What's the purpose of setup()? Why not just put the setup() code in initialize()? When does it make sense to use a setup() method?
as oskar says, there's no benefit to using that very name. If you wanted to, you could only use a single initialize function with a bunch of anonymous functions within and events but it does not make for very easy code to read, extend and maintain.
i tend to use methods like this.setupScene() and this.attachEvents() to abstract different actions. within these methods, i tend to loop through items and call smaller pseudo-private methods that do the singular dom manipulation required or element.addEvent, aka, this.elements.each(function(el) { this._attachEvent(el, "something"); }, this);
If you are sharing code with other users, there are certain conventions most mootools authors try to adhere to when releasing plugins or contributing to the core and more forks.
for example, if the class relates to an element or an array of elements, always set this.element = document.id(el); etc.
for reference on best practices: http://ryanflorence.com/11-tips-for-creating-great-mootools-plugins/
or even http://davidwalsh.name/mootools-class-tips
after a while, they start making perfect sense and will help you tremendously in your work.
There is no benefit whatsoever in using a setup/build/whatever function that is only called from the initialize function of a mootools Class.
I guess the distinction comes from languages where you don't have variable function arguments but rather overload function names with different sets of arguments. Like Java.
In Java this makes perfect sense. When you have multiple constructors that differ in the arguments they accept, then you handle the argument specific operations in your constructor and the common stuff, that every constructor needs to call in a method that is called by all constructors.
Personally I don't make this distinction in my mootools Classes, but rather only outsource functionality in its own function, if there is need to reuse the code from another function.
Don't get confused by setup functions, there is no hidden power to them.
setup is not a private MooTools method. It's not going to do anything until you create an actual method named this way.
There's one instance of this method in MooTools-more, and it's nothing beyond a simple keyword, just like createDefaults() or setInitialStuff() would be.
Keep in mind that MooTools classes are all about extending and reusing existing code. When you extend a class, you might want to change the initialization, but not the setup code. Of course you can run the parent initializer by using this.parent(), but that might introduce unwanted side-effects.
Take this (very simple) example (view live):
var Counter = new Class({
initialize: function(i){
this.i = i;
this.setup();
},
setup: function(){
new Element('p', {
'text': this.i
}).inject(document.body);
}
});
var MultiplyCounter = new Class({
Extends: Counter,
initialize: function(i){
this.i = i * 2;
this.setup();
}
});
new Counter(5);
new MultiplyCounter(5);
The extended class only changes the initialization of i, not the whole implementation of the class. For more complex classes, this creates faster (initialization is only run once) and cleaner (divide and conquer) code.
I have a large application that needs to ensure that various items are loaded (at different times, not just at startup) before calling other routines that depend on said loaded items. What i find problematic is how my architecture ends up looking to support this: it is either littered with callbacks (and nested callbacks!), or pre populated with dozens of neat little
private function SaveUser_complete(params:ReturnType):void
{
continueOnWithTheRoutineIWasIn();
}
and so forth. Right now the codebase is only perhaps 2500 lines, but it is going to grow to probably around 10k. I just can't see any other way around this, but it seems so wrong (and laborious). Also, i've looked into pureMVC, Cairngorm, and these methods seem equally tedious,except with another layer of abstraction. Any suggestions?
Well asynchronous operations always have this affect on code bases, unfortunately there's not really a lot you can do. If your loading operations form some sort of 'Service' then it would be best to make a IService interface, along with the appropriate MVC Style architecture and use data tokens. Briefly:
//In your command or whatever
var service:IService = model.getService();
var asyncToken:Token = service.someAsyncOperation(commandParams);
//some messaging is used here, 'sendMessage' would be 'sendNotification' in PureMVC
var autoCallBack:Function = function(event:TokenEvent):void
{
sendMessage(workOutMessageNameHere(commandParams), event.token.getResult());
//tidy up listeners and dispose token here
}
asyncToken.addEventListener(TokenEvent.RESULT, autoCallBack, false, 0, true);
Where I have written the words 'workOutMessageNameHere()' I assume is the part you want to automate, you could either have some sort of huge switch, or a map of commandParams (urls or whatever) to message names, either way best get this info from a model (in the same command):
private function workOutMessageNameHere(commandParams):String
{
var model:CallbackModel = frameworkMethodOfRetrivingModels();
return model.getMessageNameForAsyncCommand(commandParams);
}
This should hopefully just leave you with calling the command 'callService' or however you are triggering it, you can configure the callbackMap / switch in code or possibly via parsed XML.
Hope this gets you started, and as I've just realized, is relevant?
EDIT:
Hi, just had another read through of the problem you are trying to solve, and I think you are describing a series of finite states, i.e. a state machine.
It seems as if roughly your sequences are FunctionState -> LoadingState -> ResultState. This might be a better general approach to managing loads of little async 'chains'.
Agreeing with enzuguri. You'll need lots of callbacks no matter what, but if you can define a single interface for all of them and shove the code into controller classes or a service manager and have it all in one place, it won't become overwhelming.
I know what you are going through. Unfortunately I have never seen a good solution. Basically asynchronous code just kind of ends up this way.
One solution algorithm:
static var resourcesNeededAreLoaded:Boolean = false;
static var shouldDoItOnLoad:Boolean = false;
function doSomething()
{
if(resourcesNeededAreLoaded)
{
actuallyDoIt();
}
else
{
shouldDoItOnLoad = true;
loadNeededResource();
}
}
function loadNeededResource()
{
startLoadOfResource(callBackWhenResourceLoaded);
}
function callBackWhenResourceLoaded()
{
resourcesNeededAreLoaded = true;
if(shouldDoItOnLoad)
{
doSomething();
}
}
This kind of pattern allows you to do lazy loading, but you can also force a load when necessary. This general pattern can be abstracted and it tends to work alright. Note: an important part is calling doSomething() from the load callback and not actuallyDoIt() for reasons which will be obvious if you don't want your code to become out-of-sync.
How you abstract the above pattern depends on your specific use case. You could have a single class that manages all resource loading and acquisition and uses a map to manage what is loaded and what isn't and allows the caller to set a callback if the resource isn't available. e.g.
public class ResourceManager
{
private var isResourceLoaded:Object = {};
private var callbackOnLoad:Object = {};
private var resources:Object = {};
public function getResource(resourceId:String, callBack:Function):void
{
if(isResourceLoaded[resourceId])
{
callback(resources[resourceId]);
}
else
{
callbackOnLoad[resourceId] = callBack;
loadResource(resourceId);
}
}
// ... snip the rest since you can work it out ...
}
I would probably use events and not callbacks but that is up to you. Sometimes a central class managing all resources isn't possible in which case you might want to pass a loading proxy to an object that is capable of managing the algorithm.
public class NeedsToLoad
{
public var asyncLoader:AsyncLoaderClass;
public function doSomething():void
{
asyncLoader.execute(resourceId, actuallyDoIt);
}
public function actuallyDoIt ():void { }
}
public class AsyncLoaderClass
{
/* vars like original algorithm */
public function execute(resourceId:String, callback:Function):void
{
if(isResourceLoaded)
{
callback();
}
else
{
loadResource(resourceId);
}
}
/* implements the rest of the original algorithm */
}
Again, it isn't hard to change the above from working with callbacks to events (which I would prefer in practise but it is harder to write short example code for that).
It is important to see how the above two abstract approaches merely encapsulate the original algorithm. That way you can tailor an approach that suites your needs.
The main determinants in your final abstraction will depend on:
Who knows the state of resources ... the calling context or the service abstraction?
Do you need a central place to acquire resources from ... and the hassle of making this central place available all throughout your program (ugh ... Singletons)
How complicated really is the loading necessities of your program? (e.g. it is possible to write this abstraction in such a way that a function will not be executed until a list of resources are available).
In one of my project, I build custom loader which was basically wrapper class. I was sending it Array of elements to load and wait for either complete or failed event(further I modified it and added priority also). So I didn't have to add so many handlers for all resources.
You just need to monitor which all resources has been downloaded and when all resources complete, dispatch a custom event-resourceDownloaded or else resourcesFailed.
You can also put a flag with every resource saying it is necessary or compulsory or not, If not compulsory, don't throw failed event on failing of that resource and continue monitoring other resources!
Now with priority, you can have bunch of file which you want to display first, display and continue loading other resources in background.
You can do this same and believe me you'll enjoy using it!!
You can check the Masapi framework to see if it fulfills your needs.
You can also investigate the source code to learn how they approached the problem.
http://code.google.com/p/masapi/
It's well written and maintained. I used it successfully in a desktop RSS client I developed with Air.
It worked very well assuming you pay attention to the overhead while loading too many resources in parallel.
What are useful definitions for the common methods of passing a method or function as data, such as:
Delegates
Closures
Function pointers
Invocation by dynamic proxy and
First class methods?
Function pointers lets you pass functions around like variables. Function pointer is basically legacy method to pass function around in languages that don't support first-class methods, such as C/C++.
First class methods Basically means you can pass functions around like variables. Methods (loosely) mean functions. So this basically means first class functions. In simplest terms, it means functions are treated as "first class citizens", like variables. In the old days (C/C++), because we can't directly pass a function around, and we had to resort to workarounds like function pointers, we said functions weren't first-class citizens.
Delegates is C#'s answer to first-class methods. Delegates are somewhat more powerful because it involves closures, consider the following code snippet:
void foo( int a )
{
void bar() { writefln( a ); }
call( &bar );
}
void call( void delegate() dg ) { dg(); }
int main( char[][] args ) {
foo( 100 );
}
Notice that bar can reference the local variable a because delegates can use closures.
Closures can be very confusing at first. But the lazy-man's definition can be really simple. It basically means a variable can be available in the human-expected way. Put in other words, a variable can be referenced in places where they look like they would be present, by reading the structure of the source code. For example, looking at the code fragment above. If we didn't have closure, bar would not be able to reference a because a was only local to foo, but not bar, which is another function.
Dynamic Proxy is the odd one out. It doesn't belong to these items. Explaining it requires some very long text. It stems from the famous Proxy Pattern. The problem with Proxy Pattern was that the Proxy class needs to be implementing the same interface as the Subject. Dynamic Proxy basically means using reflective approach to discover the Subject's method so that the ProxyPattern can be freed from being tied to the Subject's interface.
just the ones i know about:
Function pointers: just that, a pointer to a piece of code. you jump to it, it executes. typed languages can enforce some parameter passing convention (i.e. C declarations)
Closures: a function with some state paired. most naturally written in lexically scoped languages (i.e. Scheme, JavaScript, Lua). several closures can share the same state (or part of it), making it an easy way to implement OOP.
First class methods: a closure created from an object instance and a method. some languages with both closures and a native OOP (Python, JavaScript) can create closures automatically.
Closure is a programming language concept. Delegate is its realization in MS.NET.
A Delegate in MS.NET is a strongly typed pointer to an object's method (a delegate instance points to both - an object and its method). There is also a way to combine several void delegate instances into one.
This question is language agnostic but I am a C# guy so I use the term POCO to mean an object that only preforms data storage, usually using getter and setter fields.
I just reworked my Domain Model to be super-duper POCO and am left with a couple of concerns regarding how to ensure that the property values make sense witin the domain.
For example, the EndDate of a Service should not exceed the EndDate of the Contract that Service is under. However, it seems like a violation of SOLID to put the check into the Service.EndDate setter, not to mention that as the number of validations that need to be done grows my POCO classes will become cluttered.
I have some solutions (will post in answers), but they have their disadvantages and am wondering what are some favorite approaches to solving this dilemma?
I think you're starting off with a bad assumption, ie, that you should have objects that do nothing but store data, and have no methods but accessors. The whole point of having objects is to encapsulate data and behaviors. If you have a thing that's just, basically, a struct, what behaviors are you encapsulating?
I always hear people argument for a "Validate" or "IsValid" method.
Personally I think this may work, but with most DDD projects you usually end up
with multiple validations that are allowable depending on the specific state of the object.
So I prefer "IsValidForNewContract", "IsValidForTermination" or similar, because I believe most projects end up with multiple such validators/states per class. That also means I get no interface, but I can write aggregated validators that read very well reflect the business conditions I am asserting.
I really do believe the generic solutions in this case very often take focus away from what's important - what the code is doing - for a very minor gain in technical elegance (the interface, delegate or whatever). Just vote me down for it ;)
A colleague of mine came up with an idea that worked out pretty well. We never came up with a great name for it but we called it Inspector/Judge.
The Inspector would look at an object and tell you all of the rules it violated. The Judge would decide what to do about it. This separation let us do a couple of things. It let us put all the rules in one place (Inspector) but we could have multiple Judges and choose the Judge by the context.
One example of the use of multiple Judges revolves around the rule that said a Customer must have an Address. This was a standard three tier app. In the UI tier the Judge would produce something that the UI could use to indicate the fields that had to be filled in. The UI Judge did not throw exceptions. In the service layer there was another Judge. If it found a Customer without an Address during Save it would throw an exception. At that point you really have to stop things from proceeding.
We also had Judges that were more strict as the state of the objects changed. It was an insurance application and during the Quoting process a Policy was allowed to be saved in an incomplete state. But once that Policy was ready to be made Active a lot of things had to be set. So the Quoting Judge on the service side was not as strict as the Activation Judge. Yet the rules used in the Inspector were still the same so you could still tell what wasn't complete even if you decided not to do anything about it.
One solution is to have each object's DataAccessObject take a list of Validators. When Save is called it preforms a check against each validator:
public class ServiceEndDateValidator : IValidator<Service> {
public void Check(Service s) {
if(s.EndDate > s.Contract.EndDate)
throw new InvalidOperationException();
}
}
public class ServiceDao : IDao<Service> {
IValidator<Service> _validators;
public ServiceDao(IEnumerable<IValidator<Service>> validators) {_validators = validators;}
public void Save(Service s) {
foreach(var v in _validators)
v.Check(service);
// Go on to save
}
}
The benefit, is very clear SoC, the disadvantage is that we don't get the check until Save() is called.
In the past I have usually delegated validation to a service unto its own, such as a ValidationService. This in principle still ad hears to the philosophy of DDD.
Internally this would contain a collection of Validators and a very simple set of public methods such as Validate() which could return a collection of error object.
Very simply, something like this in C#
public class ValidationService<T>
{
private IList<IValidator> _validators;
public IList<Error> Validate(T objectToValidate)
{
foreach(IValidator validator in _validators)
{
yield return validator.Validate(objectToValidate);
}
}
}
Validators could either be added within a default constructor or injected via some other class such as a ValidationServiceFactory.
I think that would probably be the best place for the logic, actually, but that's just me. You could have some kind of IsValid method that checks all of the conditions too and returns true/false, maybe some kind of ErrorMessages collection but that's an iffy topic since the error messages aren't really a part of the Domain Model. I'm a little biased as I've done some work with RoR and that's essentially what its models do.
Another possibility is to have each of my classes implement
public interface Validatable<T> {
public event Action<T> RequiresValidation;
}
And have each setter for each class raise the event before setting (maybe I could achieve this via attributes).
The advantage is real-time validation checking. But messier code and it is unclear who should be doing the attaching.
Here's another possibility. Validation is done through a proxy or decorator on the Domain object:
public class ServiceValidationProxy : Service {
public override DateTime EndDate {
get {return EndDate;}
set {
if(value > Contract.EndDate)
throw new InvalidOperationexception();
base.EndDate = value;
}
}
}
Advantage: Instant validation. Can easily be configured via an IoC.
Disadvantage: If a proxy, validated properties must be virtual, if a decorator all domain models must be interface-based. The validation classes will end up a bit heavyweight - proxys have to inherit the class and decorators have to implement all the methods. Naming and organization might get confusing.