Events

Events in Theia can be confusing, hopefully we can clarify things.

Let's consider this code:

(From logger-watcher.ts)

@injectable()
export class LoggerWatcher {

    getLoggerClient(): ILoggerClient {
        const emitter = this.onLogLevelChangedEmitter
        return {
            onLogLevelChanged(event: ILogLevelChangedEvent) {
                emitter.fire(event)
            }
        }
    }

    private onLogLevelChangedEmitter = new Emitter<ILogLevelChangedEvent>();

    get onLogLevelChanged(): Event<ILogLevelChangedEvent> {
        return this.onLogLevelChangedEmitter.event;
    }
}

Let's start with:

    private onLogLevelChangedEmitter = new Emitter<ILogLevelChangedEvent>();

So first what is an Emitter?

An Emitter is an event handler container, it allows for event handlers to be registered on it and triggered with an event of type X in this case an ILogLevelChangedEvent.

So here we just create an Emitter that will have events of type ILogLevelChangedEvent;

Next we want to be able to register an event handler on this Emitter to do so we do this:

    get onLogLevelChanged(): Event<ILogLevelChangedEvent> {
        return this.onLogLevelChangedEmitter.event;
    }

What this actually returns is a function that will register an event handler so you just pass it your event handler function and it will register it so that it's called when the event fires.

so you can call:

(From logger.ts)

 /* Update the root logger log level if it changes in the backend. */
        loggerWatcher.onLogLevelChanged(event => {
            this.id.then(id => {
                if (id === this.rootLoggerId) {
                    this._logLevel = Promise.resolve(event.newLogLevel);
                }
            });
        });

This registers the anonymous function passed as param on this emitter.

Next we will need to trigger this event handler by firing an event:

 onLogLevelChanged(event: ILogLevelChangedEvent) {
                emitter.fire(event)
            }

When calling this function, the emitter fires and all the event handlers are called.

So if you need to trigger events in theia:

• Create an emitter
• Register events with the emitter.event function
• Fire events with emitter.fire(event)