Using the State Machine

In a rich client application, it is often useful to track the current state of an application, such as “logged in” or “unauthenticated”. Entourage provides a State Machine component to enable this programming technique, and allow you to create stateful client applications in the web browser.

Live Example

<p>
<input id="set_active" type="button" value="Activate" on="click then l:active"/>
<input id="set_inactive" type="button" value="Inactivate" on="click then l:inactive"/>
<input id="expression" type="button" value="Inactivate (Expression)" 
  on="click then statechange[sm=inactive]"/>
</p>
<div id="messageBox" style="border:1px solid;padding:5px">
  Waiting for message...
</div>
 
<script>
jQuery(function() {
  var sm = new App.StateMachine('sm');
 
  sm.addListener(function() {
    jQuery('#messageBox').text(this.getActiveState());
  });
  sm.addState('active', 'l:active', true);
  sm.addState('inactive', 'l:inactive', true);
});
</script>

Create a new State Machine with the given name.

var my_state_machine = App.StateMachine('state_machine');

Add a state to the state machine.

my_state_machine.addState('a_state','l:message[name=value,name2!=value]', false);

Adds a listener to the state machine.

my_state_machine.addListener(function(){
  // ...
});

Changes the state machine's state to the passed in state.

my_state_machine.fireStateChange('a_state');

Returns the active state.

my_state_machine.getActiveState();

Another way to call fireStateChange(state).

my_state_machine.setActiveState('a_state');