Hi, Until recently I have been using cairngorm as a framework for flex. However, in this latest project I have switched to Mate. It's` still confusing me a little as I kind of got used to leaving data in the model. I have a couple of components which rely on the same dataset(collection). In the component the creation complete handler sends a 'GiveMeMyDataEvent' which is caught by one of the eventmaps. Now in cairngorm in my command class I would have had a quick peek in the model to decide whether I need to get the data from the server or not and then either returned the data from the model or called the db. How would I do this in Mate? Or is there a better way to go about this, I'm trying to utilize the data that has already been recieved from the server, but at the same time I'm not sure I have loaded the data or not. If a component which uses that same data has been instantiated then the answer is yes otherwise no. Any help/hints greatly appreciated.
Most things in Mate are indirect. You have managers that manage your data, and you set up injectors (which are bindings) between the managers and your views. The injectors make sure your views are synchronized with your managers. That way the views always have the latest data. Views don't get updated as a direct consequence of dispatching an event, but as an indirect consequence.
When you want to load new data you dispatch an event which is caught by an event map, which in turn calls some service, which loads data and returns it to the event map, and the event map sticks it into the appropriate manager.
When the manager gets updated the injectors make sure that the views are updated.
By using injectors you are guaranteed to always have the latest data in your views, so if the views have data the data is loaded -- unless you need to update periodically, in which case it's up to you to determine if data is stale and dispatch an event that triggers a service call, which triggers an update, which triggers the injectors to push the new data into the views again, and round it goes.
So, in short the answer to your question is that you need to make sure you use injectors properly. If this is a too high-level answer for you I know you can get more help in the Mate forums.
I ran into a similiar situation with the app I am working on at the moment, and found that it is easily implemented in Mate when you start thinking about having two events.
The first event being something like DataEvent.REFRESH_MY_DATA. This event is handled by some DataManager, which can decide to either ignore it (since data is already present in the client and considered up to date), or the manager can dispatch an event like DataEvent.FETCH_MY_DATA.
The FETCH_MY_DATA event triggers a service call in the event map, which updates a value in the manager. This update is property-injected into the view, happy days :)