Hi Corona Community
As the title says: How to properly clean external modules, so it’s memory will be released and collected by the garbage collector? -> also if the module contains eventlisteners (Runtime(enterframe), touch etc.)
Thank you for the help in advance
[import]uid: 122802 topic_id: 28093 reply_id: 328093[/import]
Hi. Great question!
Ok so say your external module looks like this:
--myModule.lua
local myModule = {}
--manage stuff
local function manageStuff(event)
--manage items
if event.phase == "began"
end
return true
end
function myModule:createCircle()
local myCircle = display.newCircle(40, 40, 10)
myCircle:addEventListener("touch", manageStuff)
return myCircle
end
local function updateStuff(event)
--do something
end
Runtime:addEventListener("enterFrame", updateStuff)
return myModule Now as you said “how would I clean this up”?
you could do something like so:
--myModule.lua
local myModule = {}
--manage stuff
local function manageStuff(event)
--manage items
if event.phase == "began"
end
return true
end
local myCircles = {}
function myModule:createCircle()
local myCircle = display.newCircle(40, 40, 10)
myCircle:addEventListener("touch", manageStuff)
myCircles[#myCircles + 1] = myCircle
return myCircle
end
local function updateStuff(event)
--do something
end
Runtime:addEventListener("enterFrame", updateStuff)
function myModule:cleanUp()
Runtime:removeEventListener("enterFrame", updateStuff)
for i = 1, #myCircles do
myCircles[i]:removeEventListener("touch", manageStuff)
end
end
return myModule Then when you want to clean up the module you can do
--Fileyour using the functions in
local myMod = require("myModule")
--Clean up myModule
myMod:cleanUp() Hope this helps!
[import]uid: 84637 topic_id: 28093 reply_id: 113653[/import]
Thanks for a great explanation Danny, I’ve been thinking about this all day and just stumbled across your post while I was browsing for another issue 
[import]uid: 105707 topic_id: 28093 reply_id: 114631[/import]