API notes/ideas

[phuedx]

Hey! I mentioned that I felt the electron-clipboard-watcher API "wasn't ideal" in a commit to phuedx/copypasta. Firstly, it's worth noting that I don't use every feature of the API so my idea of ideal likely isn't yours. Well then…

Distinguish Required And Optional Parameters

The following runs without error:

const clipboardWatcher = require('electron-clipboard-watcher')
clipboardWatcher() // or clipboardWatcher({ watchDelay: 100 })

As a client, I expect and observe that watchDelay is optional; onImageChange or onTextChange should be required, though. The easiest way to achieve this would be to throw if neither of them was present.

Consider Extending 🦄 💥 EventEmitter 💥 🦄

If the handlers truly are optional, then perhaps a more Node-like API would be as follows:

const clipboardWatcher = require('electron-clipboard-watcher')
clipboardWatcher(100) // watchDelay
  .on('text', text => { /* ... */ })
  .on('image', image => { /* ... */ })

Note that this is a little more flexible than the current API as multiple handlers can handle an event.

[phuedx]

I'll follow up with a comment about Observable. Who doesn't ❤️ Observable?