Comparison between passing an object with a handleEvent property and traditional callback function in addEventListener

Question

I read an article (link) which explains that the seconde argument of addEventListener can be a function or an object implementing handleEvent method.

In the But wait there's more section of this article, it says using handleEvent can avoid removing and re-attach the event handler. But I'm wondering if this is a better way than repeatedly 'add' and 'remove'? In terms of tidy code, performance or whatever?

Thank you all!

Answer 1

Using an object as a listener:

var listener = 
    {
    handleEvent: function (evt) {

        this === listener; // true

        // and evt === classic event object
    }
};


document.addEventListener("click", listener, false);

has the following advantages:

• It separates the interface from the implementation
• It helps avoid circular references to DOM objects
• It isolates this from the Event object

Specification authors should not define callback interfaces that have only a single operation, unless required to describe the requirements of existing APIs. Instead, a callback function should be used.

The definition of EventListener as a callback interface is an example of an existing API that needs to allow user objects with a given property (in this case “handleEvent”) to be considered to implement the interface. For new APIs, and those for which there are no compatibility concerns, using a callback function will allow only a Function object (in the ECMAScript language binding).

References

• An alternative way to addEventListener - Ajaxian

• Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification: Interface EventListener

• W3C DOM Level 2 version 1.0 - Java API: Interface EventListener

• Web IDL: Callback Interfaces

• WebIDL-1: Implementation Report - All Results