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javacollectionsconcurrencyweak-referencesevent-listener

Suitable collection class for event listeners in Java

Related: Does java have a "LinkedConcurrentHashMap" data structure?

I am looking for a collection class to hold references to event listeners.

Ideally I would like the collection to have the following properties (in order of priority):

  1. Maintains insertion order. The earlier listeners may cancel the event, preventing it from being delivered to listeners added later. This will break if using a class such as HashSet whose iterator may return elements in the wrong order.
  2. Uses WeakReferences so that the listener list does not prevent the listeners from being garbage-collected.
  3. The collection is a Set, so duplicates are automatically removed.
  4. The Iterator is a thread-safe snapshot of the collection, unaffected by the addition of new listeners. Also allows events to be delivered on multiple threads. (This is not essential - I could iterate over a clone of the set instead.)

I am aware of some classes that satisfy some but not all of these criteria. Examples:

  • java.util.LinkedHashSet (#1 and #3)
  • java.util.WeakHashMap, wrapped by Collections.newSetFromMap (#2 and #3)
  • javax.swing.event.EventListenerList (needs some extra synchronization) (#1 and #4)
  • java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArraySet (#1, #3 and #4)

But nothing with both #1 and #2. Does class like this exist in a library somewhere?

Solution

  • You could use WeakListeners (see http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-openide-util/org/openide/util/WeakListeners.html) and CopyOnWriteArraySet.

    1. Implement a remove(ListenerType listener) method in your event source.

    2. In your register(SomeListener listener) method, add a WeakListener to the collection instead:

      listenerCollection.put((ListenerType)WeakListeners.create ( ListenerType.class, listener, this));

    When the real listener is removed from memory, the weak listener will be notified, and it will unregister itself. (This is why it needs the reference to the source (this) for the registration.) The unregistration is done using reflection by calling the method remove of the source.