Overview Events and Listeners

Why Use Events and Listeners

Events are notices that objects broadcast in response to something that happens, such as a property value changing or a user interaction with an application program. Listeners execute functions when notified that the event of interest occurs. Use events to communicate changes to objects. Listeners respond by executing the callback function.

For more information, see Event and Listener Concepts.

Events and Listeners Basics

When using events and listeners:

  • Only handle classes can define events and listeners.

  • Define event names in the events block of a class definition (Events and Listeners Syntax).

  • Use event attributes to specify access to the event (Event Attributes).

  • Call the handle notify method to trigger the event. The event notification broadcasts the named event to all listeners registered for this event.

  • Use the handle addlistener method to couple a listener to the event source object. MATLAB® destroys the listener when the source of the event is destroyed.

  • Use the handle listener method to create listeners that are not coupled to the lifecycle of the event source object. This approach is useful when the event source and the listeners are defined in different components that you want to be able to add, remove, or modify independently. Your application code controls the listener object lifecycle.

  • Listener callback functions must define at least two input arguments — the event source object handle and the event data (See Listener Callback Syntax for more information).

  • Modify the data passed to each listener callback by subclassing the event.EventData class.

Predefined Events

MATLAB defines events for listening to property sets and queries. For more information, see Listen for Changes to Property Values.

All handle objects define an event named ObjectBeingDestroyed. MATLAB triggers this event before calling the class destructor.

Event Syntax

Define an event name in the events code block:

classdef ClassName < handle
   events
      EventName
   end
end

For example, MyClass defines an event named StateChange:

classdef MyClass < handle
   events
      StateChange
   end
end

Trigger an event using the handle class notify method:

classdef ClassName < handle
   events
      EventName
   end

   methods
      function anyMethod(obj)
         notify(obj,'EventName');
      end
   end
end

Any function or method can trigger the event for a specific instance of the class defining the event. For example, the triggerEvent method calls notify to trigger the StateChange event:

classdef MyClass < handle
   events
      StateChange
   end
   methods
      function triggerEvent(obj)
         notify(obj,'StateChange')
      end
   end
end

Trigger the StateChange event with the triggerEvent method:

obj = MyClass;
obj.triggerEvent

For more information, see Events and Listeners Syntax.

Create Listener

Define a listener using the handle class addlistener or listener method. Pass a function handle for the listener callback function using one of these syntaxes:

  • addlistener(SourceOfEvent,'EventName',@functionName) — for an ordinary function.

  • addlistener(SourceOfEvent,'EventName',@Obj.methodName) — for a method of Obj.

  • addlistener(SourceOfEvent,'EventName',@ClassName.methodName) — for a static method of the class ClassName.

ListenerObject = addlistener(SourceOfEvent,'EventName',@listenerCallback);

addlistener returns the listener object. The input arguments are:

  • SourceOfEvent — An object of the class that defines the event. The event is triggered on this object.

  • EventName — The name of the event defined in the class events code block.

  • @listenerCallback — a function handle referencing the function that executes in response to the event.

For example, create a listener object for the StateChange event:

function lh = createListener(src)
   lh = addlistener(src,'StateChange',@handleStateChange)
end

Define the callback function for the listener. The callback function must accept as the first two arguments the event source object and an event data object: Use the event source argument to access the object that triggered the event. Find information about the event using the event data object.

function handleStateChange(src,eventData)
   % src - handle to object that triggered the event
   % eventData - event.EventData object containing 
   %             information about the event.   
   ...
end

For more information, see Listener Callback Syntax.

See Also

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