Should listeners be able to remove listeners?

The right way to handle the addition/removal of listeners while browsing them would be to use an iterator that supports this.

For example:

// Assuming the following:
final List<Listener> listeners = ...

final Iterator<Listener> i = listeners.iterator();
while (i.hasNext()) {
   // Must be called before you can call i.remove()
   final Listener listener = i.next(); 

   // Fire an event to the listener
   i.notify();

   if (/* true iff listener wants to be deregistered */) {
       i.remove(); // that's where the magic happens :)
   }
}

NB: Please note that certain Iterators do not support the Iterator#remove method!


There are three cases:

  1. You don't want to allow the modification of the listeners collection during listeners execution:
    A ConcurrentModificationException would be appropriate in this case.

  2. You want to allow modification of listeners, but the changes are not to be reflected in the current run:
    You have to make sure a modification of listeners does not have impact on the current run. A CopyOnWriteArrayList does the trick. Before using it read the API, there are some pitfalls.
    Another solution would be copying the list before iterating through it.

  3. You want changes to listeners reflect within the current run:
    The most tricky case. Using for-each loops and iterators won't work here (as you have noticed ;-)). You have to keep track of changes yourself.
    A possbile solution would be to store listeners in an ArrayList and go through that list using a standard for loop:

    for (int i =0; i < listeners.size(); i++) { 
        Listener l = listeners.get(i);
        if (l == null) 
            continue;
        l.handleEvent();
    }  
    

    Removing listeners would set the element at its place in the array to null. New listeners are added to the end and therefore will run in the current execution.
    Notice that this solution is just an example and not threadsafe! Maybe some maintainance is necessary to remove null elements sometimes to keep the list from growing too big.

It is up to you to decide what is needed.

My personal favourite would be the second one. It allows modifications while execution but does not change the current run's behaviour which can cause unexpected results.

Tags:

Java