event-emitter

What is event-emitter?

The event-emitter npm package is a lightweight and flexible library for managing events in JavaScript. It allows you to create, listen to, and emit events, making it easier to handle asynchronous operations and decouple different parts of your application.

What are event-emitter's main functionalities?

Creating an Event Emitter

This feature allows you to create a new event emitter instance. The instance can be used to manage events within your application.

const EventEmitter = require('event-emitter');
const emitter = EventEmitter();

Listening to Events

This feature allows you to listen for specific events. When the event is emitted, the provided callback function is executed.

emitter.on('event', function(data) {
  console.log('Event received:', data);
});

Emitting Events

This feature allows you to emit events. When an event is emitted, all listeners for that event are called with the provided data.

emitter.emit('event', { key: 'value' });

Removing Event Listeners

This feature allows you to remove specific event listeners. This is useful for cleaning up and preventing memory leaks.

const callback = function(data) {
  console.log('Event received:', data);
};
emitter.on('event', callback);
emitter.off('event', callback);

Other packages similar to event-emitter

events

The 'events' package is a core Node.js module that provides a similar event-driven architecture. It is more robust and feature-rich compared to event-emitter, offering additional functionalities like once listeners and error handling.

eventemitter3

The 'eventemitter3' package is a high-performance event emitter for Node.js and the browser. It is similar to event-emitter but is optimized for speed and has a smaller footprint.

mitt

The 'mitt' package is a tiny, functional event emitter. It is simpler and more lightweight compared to event-emitter, making it ideal for small projects or performance-critical applications.

README

Event emitter

Basic event emitter for Node.js and Browsers

Installation

Node & npm:

$ npm install event-emitter

Usage

var ee = require('event-emitter');

var MyCostructor = function () {};
ee(MyConstructor.prototype);

var myObj = new MyConstructor();

// Register listener:
var listener;
myObj.on('name', listener = function (args) {
	 // ... whatever
});

// Register listener that would be removed after first emit:
myObj.once('name', function (args) {
	// ... whatever
});

// Remove registered listener
myObj.off('name', listener);

// Emit event
myObj.emit('name', arg1/*, arg2, arg3*/);

Tests

$ npm test