JsBus 0.1.3

Because.

The easiest way to use JsBus is to copy jsbus.js into your project.

JsBus is designed as a gem to work with the Rails asset pipeline. Install the gem and you're ready to go.

$ gem install jsbus

Add to your Gemfile. Run bundler, and you should be ready to go.

gem 'jsbus', '~> 0.1.3'

In application.js, add the following line, and everything should work as expected.

//= require jsbus

JsBus will add one item to your global namespace: window.eventBus. Everything else is hidden away. The basic operations are

eventBus.subscribe(eventType, callback);    // Subscribe the callback to the event type.
eventBus.publish(eventType, data);          // Publish an event with a type (optionally with data).
eventBus.unsubscribe(eventType);            // Unsubscribe all subscribers with the event type.

Subscribing to events is a simple callback pattern. Simply give the event type and what to do when the event is published.

eventBus.subscribe("my.event", function() {
  alert("my.event was raised!");
});

You can subscribe the same callback to multiple events simultaneously.

eventBus.subscribe(["my.event-one", "my.event-two"], function(event) {
  alert(event.eventType + " was raised!");
});

You can publish one event by calling publish().

eventBus.publish("my.event");

You can publish multiple events simultaneously by sending an array of events.

eventBus.publish(["my.event-one", "my.event-two"]);

You can send data with a publish. You can get to the data by receiving the event in your callback. The data will be stored in event.data.

eventBus.subscribe("my.event", function(event) {
  alert("x: " + event.data.x);
});
eventBus.publish("my.event", { x: 1, y: 3, z: [2, 4, 6] });

Publishing an event can also have a callback. The publisher callback will be invoked after each subscribers.

eventBus.publish("my.event", function() {
  alert("I'm back!");
});

In the example above, if my.event has three subscribers, you can expect three alert popups.

You can even do basic request/response style programming with JsBus. To do this, your subscriber should have a return statement. Whatever is returned from the subscriber will be passed into the publisher's callback.

eventBus.subscribe("my.event", function (event) {
  switch (event.data.op) {
    case 'increment':
      return event.data.value + 1;
    case 'decrement':
      return event.data.value - 1;
    case 'square':
      return event.data.value * event.data.value;
    default:
      return 0;
  }
});
eventBus.publish("my.event", { op: 'square', value: 3 }, function (response) {
  alert("response is: " + response); // response is: 9
});

You can unsubscribe from one or more events, too.

eventBus.unsubscribe('my.event');
eventBus.unsubscribe(['my.event.one', 'my.event.two']);

A Node Express test application is provided in the repository. Unit testing is done with [QUnit] (http://qunitjs.com). You can see a sample usage by browsing to /sample.

$ git clone git@github.com:jarrettmeyer/jsbus.git
$ cd jsbus
$ node ./sample/app

The QUnit tests are at /qunit. A sample page is located at /sample.

Jarrett Meyer

• @jarrettmeyer
• jarrettmeyer.com