Events System

New in version 2.1.

Creating maintainable applications is both a science and an art. It is well-known that a key for having good quality code is making your objects loosely coupled and strongly cohesive at the same time. Cohesion means that all methods and properties for a class are strongly related to the class itself and it is not trying to do the job other objects should be doing, while loosely coupling is the measure of how little a class is “wired” to external objects, and how much that class is depending on them.

There are certain cases where you need to cleanly communicate with other parts of an application, without having to hard code dependencies, thus losing cohesion and increasing class coupling. Using the Observer pattern, which allows objects to notify other objects and anonymous listeners about changes is a useful pattern to achieve this goal.

Listeners in the observer pattern can subscribe to events and choose to act upon them if they are relevant. If you have used JavaScript, there is a good chance that you are already familiar with event driven programming.

CakePHP emulates several aspects of how events are triggered and managed in popular JavaScript libraries such as jQuery. In the CakePHP implementation, an event object is dispatched to all listeners. The event object holds information about the event, and provides the ability to stop event propagation at any point. Listeners can register themselves or can delegate this task to other objects and have the chance to alter the state and the event itself for the rest of the callbacks.

The event subsystem is at the heart of Model, Behavior, Controller, View and Helper callbacks. If you’ve ever used any of them, you are already somewhat familiar with events in CakePHP.

Example Event Usage

Let’s suppose you are building a Cart plugin, and you’d like to focus on just handling order logic. You don’t really want to include shipping logic, emailing the user or decrementing the item from the stock, but these are important tasks to the people using your plugin. If you were not using events, you may try to implement this by attaching behaviors to models, or adding components to your controllers. Doing so represents a challenge most of the time, since you would have to come up with the code for externally loading those behaviors or attaching hooks to your plugin controllers.

Instead, you can use events to allow you to cleanly separate the concerns of your code and allow additional concerns to hook into your plugin using events. For example in your Cart plugin you have an Order model that deals with creating orders. You’d like to notify the rest of the application that an order has been created. To keep your Order model clean you could use events:

// Cart/Model/Order.php
App::uses('CakeEvent', 'Event');
class Order extends AppModel {

    public function place($order) {
        if ($this->save($order)) {
            $this->Cart->remove($order);
            $event = new CakeEvent('Model.Order.afterPlace', $this, array(
                'order' => $order
            ));
            $this->getEventManager()->dispatch($event);
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

The above code allows you to easily notify the other parts of the application that an order has been created. You can then do tasks like send email notifications, update stock, log relevant statistics and other tasks in separate objects that focus on those concerns.

Accessing Event Managers

In CakePHP events are triggered against event managers. Event managers are available in every Model, View and Controller using getEventManager():

$events = $this->getEventManager();

Each model has a separate event manager, while the View and Controller share one. This allows model events to be self contained, and allow components or controllers to act upon events created in the view if necessary.

Global Event Manager

In addition to instance level event managers, CakePHP provides a global event manager that allows you to listen to any event fired in an application. This is useful when attaching listeners to a specific instance might be cumbersome or difficult. The global manager is a singleton instance of CakeEventManager. When an event is dispatched, it will be dispatched both to the global and to the instance level listeners in priority order. You can access the global manager using a static method:

// In any configuration file or piece of code that executes before the event
App::uses('CakeEventManager', 'Event');
CakeEventManager::instance()->attach(
    $aCallback,
    'Model.Order.afterPlace'
);

One important thing you should consider is that there are events that will be triggered having the same name but different subjects, so checking it in the event object is usually required in any function that gets attached globally in order to prevent some bugs. Remember that with the flexibility of using the global manager, some additional complexity is incurred.

Changed in version 2.5: Prior to 2.5, listeners on the global manager were kept in a separate list and fired before instance listeners are. After 2.5, global and instance listeners are fired in priority order.

Dispatching Events

Once you have obtained an instance of an event manager you can dispatch events using dispatch(). This method takes an instance of the CakeEvent class. Let’s look at dispatching an event:

// Create a new event and dispatch it.
$event = new CakeEvent('Model.Order.afterPlace', $this, array(
    'order' => $order
));
$this->getEventManager()->dispatch($event);

CakeEvent accepts 3 arguments in its constructor. The first one is the event name, you should try to keep this name as unique as possible, while making it readable. We suggest a convention as follows: Layer.eventName for general events happening at a layer level (e.g. Controller.startup, View.beforeRender) and Layer.Class.eventName for events happening in specific classes on a layer, for example Model.User.afterRegister or Controller.Courses.invalidAccess.

The second argument is the subject, meaning the object associated to the event, usually when it is the same class triggering events about itself, using $this will be the most common case. Although a Component could trigger controller events too. The subject class is important because listeners will get immediate access to the object properties and have the chance to inspect or change them on the fly.

Finally, the third argument is any additional event data.This can be any data you consider useful to pass around so listeners can act upon it. While this can be an argument of any type, we recommend passing an associative array.

The dispatch() method accepts an event object as an argument and notifies all subscribed listeners.

Registering Listeners

Listeners are the preferred way to register callbacks for an event. This is done by implementing the CakeEventListener interface in any class you wish to register some callbacks. Classes implementing it need to provide the implementedEvents() method. This method must return an associative array with all event names that the class will handle.

To continue our previous example, let’s imagine we have a UserStatistic class responsible for calculating a user’s purchasing history, and compiling into global site statistics. This is a great place to use a listener class. Doing so allows you concentrate the statistics logic in one place and react to events as necessary. Our UserStatistics listener might start out like:

// In app/Lib/Event/UserStatistic.php
App::uses('CakeEventListener', 'Event');

class UserStatistic implements CakeEventListener {

    public function implementedEvents() {
        return array(
            'Model.Order.afterPlace' => 'updateBuyStatistic',
        );
    }

    public function updateBuyStatistic($event) {
        // Code to update statistics
    }
}

// In a controller or somewhere else where $this->Order is accessible
// Attach the UserStatistic object to the Order's event manager
$statistics = new UserStatistic();
$this->Order->getEventManager()->attach($statistics);

As you can see in the above code, the attach function will accept instances of the CakeEventListener interface. Internally, the event manager will use implementedEvents to attach the correct callbacks.

Registering Global Listeners

As shown in the example above, event listeners are conventionally placed in app/Lib/Event. Following this convention allows you to easily locate your listener classes. It is also recommended that you attach global listeners during your application bootstrap process:

// In app/Config/bootstrap.php

// Load the global event listeners.
require_once APP . 'Config' . DS . 'events.php'

An example events bootstrap file for our cart application could look like:

// In app/Config/events.php

// Load event listeners
App::uses('UserStatistic', 'Lib/Event');
App::uses('ProductStatistic', 'Lib/Event');
App::uses('CakeEventManager', 'Event');

// Attach listeners.
CakeEventManager::instance()->attach(new UserStatistic());
CakeEventManager::instance()->attach(new ProductStatistic());

Registering Anonymous Listeners

While event listener objects are generally a better way to implement listeners, you can also bind any callable as an event listener. For example if we wanted to put any orders into the log files, we could use a simple anonymous function to do so:

// Anonymous functions require PHP 5.3+
$this->Order->getEventManager()->attach(function($event) {
    CakeLog::write(
        'info',
        'A new order was placed with id: ' . $event->subject()->id
    );
}, 'Model.Order.afterPlace');

In addition to anonymous functions you can use any other callable type that PHP supports:

$events = array(
    'email-sending' => 'EmailSender::sendBuyEmail',
    'inventory' => array($this->InventoryManager, 'decrement'),
);
foreach ($events as $callable) {
    $eventManager->attach($callable, 'Model.Order.afterPlace');
}

Establishing Priorities

In some cases you might want to control the order that listeners are invoked. For instance, if we go back to our user statistics example. It would be ideal if this listener was called at the end of the stack. By calling it at the end of the listener stack, we can ensure that the event was not canceled, and that no other listeners raised exceptions. We can also get the final state of the objects in the case that other listeners have modified the subject or event object.

Priorities are defined as an integer when adding a listener. The higher the number, the later the method will be fired. The default priority for all listeners is 10. If you need your method to be run earlier, using any value below this default will work. On the other hand if you desire to run the callback after the others, using a number above 10 will do.

If two callbacks happen to have the same priority value, they will be executed with a the order they were attached. You set priorities using the attach method for callbacks, and declaring it in the implementedEvents function for event listeners:

// Setting priority for a callback
$callback = array($this, 'doSomething');
$this->getEventManager()->attach(
    $callback,
    'Model.Order.afterPlace',
    array('priority' => 2)
);

// Setting priority for a listener
class UserStatistic implements CakeEventListener {
    public function implementedEvents() {
        return array(
            'Model.Order.afterPlace' => array(
                'callable' => 'updateBuyStatistic',
                'priority' => 100
            ),
        );
    }
}

As you see, the main difference for CakeEventListener objects is that you need to use an array for specifying the callable method and the priority preference. The callable key is an special array entry that the manager will read to know what function in the class it should be calling.

Getting Event Data as Function Parameters

By default listeners receive the event object as their only parameter. If you are building an event that doesn’t need access to the event object you may want to have the event data passed as function parameters. This feature is used by the callbacks CakePHP fires in order to preserve backwards compatibility.

If you want to enable this feature, you have to add the passParams option to the third argument of the attach method, or declare it in the implementedEvents returned array similar to what you do with priorities:

// Enabling passed parameters mode for an anonymous listener
$callback = array($this, 'doSomething');
$this->getEventManager()->attach(
    $callback,
    'Model.Order.afterPlace',
    array('passParams' => true)
);

// Enabling passed parameters mode for a listener
class UserStatistic implements CakeEventListener {
    public function implementedEvents() {
        return array(
            'Model.Order.afterPlace' => array(
                'callable' => 'updateBuyStatistic',
                'passParams' => true
            ),
        );
    }

    public function updateBuyStatistic($orderData) {
        // ...
    }
}

In the above code the doSomething function and updateBuyStatistic method will receive $orderData instead of the $event object. This is so, because in our previous example we trigger the Model.Order.afterPlace event with some data:

$event = new CakeEvent('Model.Order.afterPlace', $this, array(
    'order' => $order
));
$this->getEventManager()->dispatch($event);

Note

The params can only be passed as function arguments if the event data is an array. Any other data type cannot be converted to function parameters, thus not using this option is often the most adequate choice.

Stopping Events

Much like DOM events, you may want to stop an event to prevent additional listeners from being notified. You can see this in action during model callbacks (e.g. beforeSave) in which it is possible to stop the saving operation if the code detects it cannot proceed any further.

In order to stop events you can either return false in your callbacks or call the stopPropagation method on the event object:

public function doSomething($event) {
    // ...
    return false; // stops the event
}

public function updateBuyStatistic($event) {
    // ...
    $event->stopPropagation();
}

Stopping an event will prevent any additional callbacks from being called. Additionally the code triggering the event may behave differently based on the event being stopped or not. Generally it does not make sense to stop ‘after’ events, but stopping ‘before’ events is often used to prevent the entire operation from occurring.

To check if an event was stopped, you call the isStopped() method in the event object:

public function place($order) {
    $event = new CakeEvent(
        'Model.Order.beforePlace',
        $this, array('order' => $order)
    );
    $this->getEventManager()->dispatch($event);
    if ($event->isStopped()) {
        return false;
    }
    if ($this->Order->save($order)) {
        // ...
    }
    // ...
}

In the previous example the order would not get saved if the event is stopped during the beforePlace process.

Getting Event Results

Every time a callback returns a value, it gets stored in the $result property of the event object. This is useful when you want to allow callbacks to modify the event execution. Let’s take again our beforePlace example and let callbacks modify the $order data.

Event results can be altered either using the event object result property directly or returning the value in the callback itself:

// A listener callback
public function doSomething($event) {
    // ...
    $alteredData = $event->data['order'] + $moreData;
    return $alteredData;
}

// Another listener callback
public function doSomethingElse($event) {
    // ...
    $event->result['order'] = $alteredData;
}

// Using the event result
public function place($order) {
    $event = new CakeEvent(
        'Model.Order.beforePlace',
        $this, array('order' => $order)
    );
    $this->getEventManager()->dispatch($event);
    if (!empty($event->result['order'])) {
        $order = $event->result['order'];
    }
    if ($this->Order->save($order)) {
        // ...
    }
    // ...
}

It is possible to alter any event object property and have the new data passed to the next callback. In most of the cases, providing objects as event data or result and directly altering the object is the best solution as the reference is kept the same and modifications are shared across all callback calls.

Removing Callbacks and Listeners

If for any reason you want to remove any callback from the event manager just call the CakeEventManager::detach() method using as arguments the first two params you used for attaching it:

// Attaching a function
$this->getEventManager()->attach(array($this, 'doSomething'), 'My.event');

// Detaching the function
$this->getEventManager()->detach(array($this, 'doSomething'), 'My.event');

// Attaching an anonymous function (PHP 5.3+ only);
$myFunction = function($event) { ... };
$this->getEventManager()->attach($myFunction, 'My.event');

// Detaching the anonymous function
$this->getEventManager()->detach($myFunction, 'My.event');

// Attaching a CakeEventListener
$listener = new MyEventListener();
$this->getEventManager()->attach($listener);

// Detaching a single event key from a listener
$this->getEventManager()->detach($listener, 'My.event');

// Detaching all callbacks implemented by a listener
$this->getEventManager()->detach($listener);

Conclusion

Events are a great way of separating concerns in your application and make classes both cohesive and decoupled from each other. Events can be utilized to de-couple application code and make extensible plugins.

Keep in mind that with great power comes great responsibility. Using too many events can make debugging harder and require additional integration testing.

Additional Reading