EventListeners, bindingUtils, garbageCollection and you...

Question

Hey everyone,
I hope somewhere can help me with this, because I have been
running in circles on this. I am developing on a fairly large
application and have recently noticed that instances of my class
that have event listeners of data binding tied to them cannot be
garbage collected. It has led to some fantastically bizarre
artifacts and some gross memory leaks. Multiple copies of screens
modifying and accessing the same array collections and such...fun.
The way I see it, there are three real solutions here...
1.) dictate that all programmers declare weak references when
creating event listeners
2.) create some sort of onDestroy method that kills bindings
and removes eventlisteners when a child is removed from it's parent
3.) override the addEventListener method to ensure that weak
references are made, when people inevitable forget #1!
My questions are thrice: are those my only options?! Or have
any of you more experienced folks conquered this situation in a
more elegant, reliable way? If these are my only options, which is
the best, in your opinions?
Thank you very much for any info you can give; I'm relatively
new to Flex and while I understand the GC's terms and conditions,
I'm hoping there is some way to avoid a massive rewrite/refactoring
to make it work with me. Thanks again!
-=Bill

Answer 1

"bill.cabral" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:gdqvng$cav$[email protected]..
> Hey everyone,
>
> I hope somewhere can help me with this, because I have
been running in
> circles
> on this. I am developing on a fairly large application
and have recently
> noticed that instances of my class that have event
listeners of data
> binding
> tied to them cannot be garbage collected. It has led to
some
> fantastically
> bizarre artifacts and some gross memory leaks. Multiple
copies of screens
> modifying and accessing the same array collections and
such...fun. The
> way I
> see it, there are three real solutions here...
>
> 1.) dictate that all programmers declare weak references
when creating
> event
> listeners
> 2.) create some sort of onDestroy method that kills
bindings and removes
> eventlisteners when a child is removed from it's parent
> 3.) override the addEventListener method to ensure that
weak references
> are
> made, when people inevitable forget #1!
>
> My questions are thrice: are those my only options?! Or
have any of you
> more
> experienced folks conquered this situation in a more
elegant, reliable
> way? If
> these are my only options, which is the best, in your
opinions?
>
> Thank you very much for any info you can give; I'm
relatively new to Flex
> and
> while I understand the GC's terms and conditions, I'm
hoping there is some
> way
> to avoid a massive rewrite/refactoring to make it work
with me. Thanks
> again!
There aren't any easy answers, but this might point you in
the right
direction:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1733261879?bclid=1729365228&bctid=17412126 60
Keep in mind that any event listeners added within the scope
of a component
will be destroyed when the component is destroyed.
so this.addEventListener=OK
that.addEventListener=may not be
HTH;
Amy