When is a event listener invoked during program execution?

Question

I am using the Obervable-Observer Pattern.

MyClass extends Observable{

  invokeListeners(){
     doSomething;
     setChanged();
     notifyListeners();//This invokes onUpdate() in "implements Observer" 

     return value;
  }
}

ClassTwo implements Observer{

   onUpdate(){
      //This is called after notifyListeners();
   }
}

My question is when will the onUpdate method in the Listener Class get invoked? After the invokeListeners() methods completes, or right after notifyListeners()?

Answer 1

In the Implementation of

notifyListeners();//This invokes onUpdate() in "implements Observer"

is normally a loop over all registered Observers.

In this loop is normally a direct call to

onUpdate()

on each registered Observer.

Be sure not to block the execution in the implementation of

onUpdate()

Answer 2

In general, notifyListeners is implemented as a list of delegates/observers which are just plain old functions that get called in order. So the observer functions will generally be invoked during the notifyListeners call (like your comment implies).

There are different possible implementations, some that run in parallel in background threads, some that send the request off to a queue, but the direct call is the most common.

Answer 3

To check the stacktrace, I incremented a static int in the update() method of all the listeners.

I added a System.out.println() in the method where I call notifyListeners() and in the update() methods of the listeners to see the value of the static. Following is stacktrace values -

public static int observer = 0; //Initialized

StackTrace : After NotifyListeners : 0 In update() : 1 In update() : 2 In update() : 3

This implies that the method in which notifyListeners() call is placed, first completes its execution and after that the update() methods in the Observer are called in a loop.