Is it possible to disconnect all event handlers in Dojo?

Question

Some code I am working with replaces some HTML elements that have Dojo event listeners with new HTML coming from an AJAX call (using .innerHTML=). I have read that event listeners should be disconnected using the dojo.disconnect(handle) method before they are replaced to prevent memory leaks.

Is it possible to derive all handles connected to a particular element, so that I can pass each one to .disconnect(handle), or is it up to me to maintain this list in my code?

Answer 1

Actually if you are using widgets they normally should disconnect stuff in tehir destroy() method. If you are handling the nodes yourself, I see two ways you can go.

1) Manage all connects manually, means storing them somewhere. 2) Probably the safer one: store all the connect handlers in the node they connect to, like so:

node._connectHandlers = [];
node._connectHandlers.push(dojo.connect(node, "onclick", ...));

And later you can simply disconnect them all using

dojo.query("*", nodeContainingConnects).forEach(function(node){
    if (typeof node._connectHandlers!="undefined"){
        dojo.forEach(node._connectHandlers, "dojo.disconnect(item)");
    }
});

Actually, this may work well, but there might be a more efficient way to get all connects by nodes. I just didnt find it. hth