Best way to do events with the PopUpManager?

Question

If I am using the PopUpManager to add a child, and I dispatch an event from that child, the bubbles don't seem to bubble to the top of my application (main application).

For instance:

PopUpManager.addPopUp( popup, parentApplication as Application, false );

Then in the popup, I do:

dispatchEvent( new Event( "testEvent", true ) );

I have an eventListener in parentApplication (root .mxml) for "testEvent", but it never fires. Because of this, I have been dispatching events and listening for events on the ModelLocator (using cairngorm). This obviously is not ideal, because I have to manually make sure I remove the event listeners in a lot of cases.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm more familiar with Mate than Cairngorm, but what I do in this situation is to back up my pop up with a model and dispatch the events off of the model. Since the model and the main application sit at the same level, the main application can hear the events.

Update:

Here's a rough example.

In my MainMap.mxml I create an instance of the presentation model and inject it into my popup.

<EventHandlers type="{ FlexEvent.PREINITIALIZE }">
  <ObjectBuilder generator="{ MyPopUpPresentationModel  }" constructorArguments="{ scope.dispatcher }"/>
</EventHandlers>

<Injectors target="{ MyPopUp }">
    <PropertyInjector targetKey="model" source="{ MyPopUpPresentationModel }"/>
</Injectors>

And In MyPopUp.mxml I have an instance of my model.

<fx:Script>
  <![CDATA[
    [Bindable] public var model:MyPopUpPresentationModel;
  ]]>
</fx:Script>

Here's MyPopUpPresentationModel.as.

package
{
  private var dispatcher:IEventDispatcher;
  public function DigitalTagTrackingPresentationModel(target:IEventDispatcher)
  {
    this.dispatcher = target;
  }

  public function dispatchMyCustomEvent():void
  {
    dispatcher.dispatchEvent(new Event("MyCustomEvent"));
  }
}

When you call model.dispatchMyCustomEvent(); from MyPopUp.mxml it will dispatch the event using the scope of the presentation model's dispatcher which will be at the same level as the parent application. I hope this helps!

Answer 2

Try this instead

var popup:SomePopup = PopUpManager.createPopup(this, SomePopup, true) as SomePopup;
popup.addEventListener(CloseEvent.CLOSE, onClose);

And make sure you remove that even listener when the popup closes.

Answer 3

If you want to catch bubbling events at the top, you can add your event listener to FlexGlobals.topLevelApplication.systemManager. Hope that helps.

Answer 4

In your popup, you can use: Application.application.dispatchEvent, as long as you listener itself is attached to Application.application.

I'm actually not a big fan of dispatching on Application.application, because it reduces the reusability of the component model, but in a pinch it does work.