What is AS3-Signals?

AS3-Signals (or ‘signals’ for short) is a proven alternative to the native AS3 event system.

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Comparison

Syntax
You can see that only line 4 is different.

Flash Events

//CREATE
_person = new Person("Sam");
//LISTEN
_person.addEventListener(PersonEvent.GREETED, _onPersonGreeted);
//CALL
_person.greet("Hello!");

AS3-Signals

//CREATE
_robot = new Robot("Robot");
//LISTEN
_robot.signal.add(_onRobotSignalGreeted);
//CALL
_robot.greet("It is me, the Robot!");

What about the speed of AS3-Signals vs Events?

See this image from Ross Gerbasi showing a comparison in milliseconds (lower # is better/faster).

AS3-Signals and Robotlegs

I am a big fan of the Robotlegs framework for AS3. I’ve written about it many times. AS3-Signals is a completely separate project, but WOW these two play really nice together. In my series of custom project templates I created a specific Robotlegs w/ AS3-Signals Template. On a recent client project I chose Robotlegs and added in the optional AS3-Signals project.

Next Steps

• Checkout the proof that AS3-Signals are FASTER than events!
• Read this good article and code on AS3-Signals for Robotlegs.
• See this nice overview of AS3-Signals
• Checkout the HD Tutorial Video and full source code for this post (See ‘Member Resources’ below).

Member Resources