How to remove all event listeners from a display object?

Question

Is there a way to determine which event listeners are registered with a display object? I want to remove all event listeners from a display object so that I can assign new ones based on context changes in the application.

Answer 1

back2dos has mentioned the approach you should use, what i did was extend the movieclip class and implemented all kinds of functions that i use on daily basis but are not part of the movieclip class. including the override for the addEventListener class

protected var listeners : Dictionary    = new Dictionary();
override public function addEventListener( type : String, listener : Function, useCapture : Boolean = false, priority : int = 0, useWeakReference : Boolean = true) : void
{
        var key : Object = {type:type,useCapture:useCapture};
        if( listeners[ key ] ) {
                removeEventListener( type, listeners[ key ], useCapture );
                listeners[ key ] = null;
        }
        listeners[ key ] = listener;

        super.addEventListener( type, listener, useCapture, priority, useWeakReference );
}
protected function removeListeners () : void
{
        try
        {
            for (var key:Object in listeners) {
                    removeEventListener( key.type, listeners[ key ], key.useCapture );
                        listeners[ key ] = null;
            }
        }catch(e:Error){}
}

Answer 2

jeceuyper is right ...

a side not though: DisplayObject extends EventDispatcher, which already does implement IEventDispatcher ... so to be more precise: you need to override addEventListener and removeEventListener to keep track of the listeners ...

a few technical details: i suggest you use Dictionary to store the handler functions ... a bit slower for insertion, but much faster for removal ... also, Dictionary supports weak references, which is quite important in the case of event handling ... also keep in mind, that useCapture allows to add the same handler twice ...

good luck then ... ;)