public interface EventContext
extends Context

Contains methods for registering/deregistering listeners to be notified of events fired when objects named in a context changes.

Target

The name parameter in the addNamingListener() methods is referred to as the target. The target, along with the scope, identify the object(s) that the listener is interested in. It is possible to register interest in a target that does not exist, but there might be limitations in the extent to which this can be supported by the service provider and underlying protocol/service.

If a service only supports registration for existing targets, an attempt to register for a nonexistent target results in a NameNotFoundException being thrown as early as possible, preferably at the time addNamingListener() is called, or if that is not possible, the listener will receive the exception through the NamingExceptionEvent.

Also, for service providers that only support registration for existing targets, when the target that a listener has registered for is subsequently removed from the namespace, the listener is notified via a NamingExceptionEvent (containing a NameNotFoundException).

An application can use the method targetMustExist() to check whether a EventContext supports registration of nonexistent targets.

Event Source

The EventContext instance on which you invoke the registration methods is the event source of the events that are (potentially) generated. The source is not necessarily the object named by the target. Only when the target is the empty name is the object named by the target the source. In other words, the target, along with the scope parameter, are used to identify the object(s) that the listener is interested in, but the event source is the EventContext instance with which the listener has registered.

For example, suppose a listener makes the following registration:

NamespaceChangeListener listener = ...;
src.addNamingListener("x", SUBTREE_SCOPE, listener);

When an object named "x/y" is subsequently deleted, the corresponding NamingEvent (evt) must contain:

evt.getEventContext() == src
evt.getOldBinding().getName().equals("x/y")

Furthermore, listener registration/deregistration is with the EventContext instance, and not with the corresponding object in the namespace. If the program intends at some point to remove a listener, then it needs to keep a reference to the EventContext instance on which it invoked addNamingListener() (just as it needs to keep a reference to the listener in order to remove it later). It cannot expect to do a lookup() and get another instance of a EventContext on which to perform the deregistration.

Lifetime of Registration

A registered listener becomes deregistered when:

• It is removed using removeNamingListener().
• An exception is thrown while collecting information about the events. That is, when the listener receives a NamingExceptionEvent.
• Context.close() is invoked on the EventContext instance with which it has registered.

Until that point, a EventContext instance that has outstanding listeners will continue to exist and be maintained by the service provider.

Listener Implementations

The registration/deregistration methods accept an instance of NamingListener. There are subinterfaces of NamingListener for different of event types of NamingEvent. For example, the ObjectChangeListener interface is for the NamingEvent.OBJECT_CHANGED event type. To register interest in multiple event types, the listener implementation should implement multiple NamingListener subinterfaces and use a single invocation of addNamingListener(). In addition to reducing the number of method calls and possibly the code size of the listeners, this allows some service providers to optimize the registration.

Threading Issues

Like Context instances in general, instances of EventContext are not guaranteed to be thread-safe. Care must be taken when multiple threads are accessing the same EventContext concurrently. See the package description for more information on threading issues.

Fields

OBJECT_SCOPE

static final int OBJECT_SCOPE

See Also:

Constant Field Values

ONELEVEL_SCOPE

static final int ONELEVEL_SCOPE

See Also:

Constant Field Values

SUBTREE_SCOPE

static final int SUBTREE_SCOPE

See Also:

Constant Field Values

Methods

addNamingListener

void addNamingListener(Name target,
                       int scope,
                       NamingListener l)
                throws NamingException

Parameters:

target - A nonnull name to be resolved relative to this context.

scope - One of OBJECT_SCOPE, ONELEVEL_SCOPE, or SUBTREE_SCOPE.

l - The nonnull listener.

Throws:

NamingException - If a problem was encountered while adding the listener.

See Also:

removeNamingListener(javax.naming.event.NamingListener)

addNamingListener

void addNamingListener(String target,
                       int scope,
                       NamingListener l)
                throws NamingException

Adds a listener for receiving naming events fired when the object named by the string target name and scope changes. See the overload that accepts a Name for details.

Parameters:

target - The nonnull string name of the object resolved relative to this context.

scope - One of OBJECT_SCOPE, ONELEVEL_SCOPE, or SUBTREE_SCOPE.

l - The nonnull listener.

Throws:

NamingException - If a problem was encountered while adding the listener.

See Also:

removeNamingListener(javax.naming.event.NamingListener)

removeNamingListener

void removeNamingListener(NamingListener l)
                   throws NamingException

Removes a listener from receiving naming events fired by this EventContext. The listener may have registered more than once with this EventContext, perhaps with different target/scope arguments. After this method is invoked, the listener will no longer receive events with this EventContext instance as the event source (except for those events already in the process of being dispatched). If the listener was not, or is no longer, registered with this EventContext instance, this method does not do anything.

Parameters:

l - The nonnull listener.

Throws:

NamingException - If a problem was encountered while removing the listener.

See Also:

addNamingListener(javax.naming.Name, int, javax.naming.event.NamingListener)

targetMustExist

boolean targetMustExist()
                 throws NamingException

Determines whether a listener can register interest in a target that does not exist.

Returns:

true if the target must exist; false if the target need not exist.

Throws:

NamingException - If the context's behavior in this regard cannot be determined.