Observable#addObserver()

Adds an observer on a property.

This is the core method used to register an observer for a property.

Once you call this method, any time the key's value is set, your observer will be notified. Note that the observers are triggered any time the value is set, regardless of whether it has actually changed. Your observer should be prepared to handle that.

You can also pass an optional context parameter to this method. The context will be passed to your observer method whenever it is triggered. Note that if you add the same target/method pair on a key multiple times with different context parameters, your observer will only be called once with the last context you passed.

Observer Methods

Observer methods you pass should generally have the following signature if you do not pass a context parameter:

fooDidChange: function(sender, key, value, rev) { };

The sender is the object that changed. The key is the property that changes. The value property is currently reserved and unused. The rev is the last property revision of the object when it changed, which you can use to detect if the key value has really changed or not.

If you pass a context parameter, the context will be passed before the revision like so:

fooDidChange: function(sender, key, value, context, rev) { };

Usually you will not need the value, context or revision parameters at the end. In this case, it is common to write observer methods that take only a sender and key value as parameters or, if you aren't interested in any of these values, to write an observer that has no parameters at all.