Comments on: Object pooling in Flex / ActionSctipt

By: elad.ny

elad.ny — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:59:54 +0000

Hi Jeannie, the source code moved to github: http://github.com/EladElrom/eladlib

By: Jeannie

Jeannie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:54:30 +0000

I would like to learn more about object pooling. However, the link seems to be broken.

ReusablePool.as resulted in a 404 error. Can you make it available again?

By: elad.ny

elad.ny — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:51:23 +0000

Ian, can you share the code? BTW looking forward meeting you during FlashCamp Philly!

By: Ian McLean

Ian McLean — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:02:33 +0000

Very cool. I’ve done something similar to this in the past which is to create a UIComponent singleton and place it in your application mxml. It can hold any components needed for re-use (creationPolicy an be set to all if needed). It works a lot like a Locator and you pull up a reference to an object using a static function. It has the benefit of being able define things in mxml and having a visual reference for whats in your object pool. It works pretty well for the quick and dirty.

By: elad.ny

elad.ny — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:00:22 +0000

Absolutely, thanks for mentioning the GC expense..

By: David Wilhelm

David Wilhelm — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:56:21 +0000

Thanks for sharing that.. may well use it at some point. Its not only the object creation that is expensive CPU-wise, but also the GC, so you get a double performance boost from re-using objects.

By: Jason Crist

Jason Crist — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:27:42 +0000

I’ve gotten HUGE memory and performance gains using this pattern. In some of my apps I render hundreds of components at a time, reuse is vital. Nice implementation of it. Certainly appreciate sharing the code.

For those that don’t know the Flex list component family uses the same technique for the data renderers. I can’t say I’m familiar with Adobe’s implementation though. Expanding that idea to other areas is a big help.