Question

I am trying to handle a drag & drop interaction, which involves mouse down, mouse move, and mouse up.

Here is a simplified repro of my solution that:

• on mouse down, creates an ellipse and adds it to a canvas
• on mouse move, repositions the ellipse to follow the mouse

• on mouse up, changes the colour of the canvas so that it’s obvious which one you’re dragging.

  var mouseDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(canvas, "MouseLeftButtonDown");
  var mouseUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(canvas, "MouseLeftButtonUp");
  var mouseMove = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(canvas, "MouseMove");
  
  Ellipse ellipse = null;
  
  var q = from start in mouseDown.Do(x =>
              {
                  // handle mousedown by creating a red ellipse, 
                  // adding it to the canvas at the right position
                  ellipse = new Ellipse() { Width = 10, Height = 10, Fill = Brushes.Red };
                  Point position = x.EventArgs.GetPosition(canvas);
                  Canvas.SetLeft(ellipse, position.X);
                  Canvas.SetTop(ellipse, position.Y);
                  canvas.Children.Add(ellipse);
              })
          from delta in mouseMove.Until(mouseUp.Do(x =>
              {
                  // handle mouse up by making the ellipse green
                  ellipse.Fill = Brushes.Green;
              }))
          select delta;
  
  q.Subscribe(x =>
  {
      // handle mouse move by repositioning ellipse
      Point position = x.EventArgs.GetPosition(canvas);
      Canvas.SetLeft(ellipse, position.X);
      Canvas.SetTop(ellipse, position.Y);
  });
  

the XAML is simply

    <Canvas x:Name="canvas"/>

There’s a few things I don’t like about this code, and I need help refactoring it 🙂

First of all: the mousedown and mouseup callbacks are specified as side effects. If two subscriptions are made to q, they will happen twice.

Second, the mouseup callback is specified before the mousemove callback. This makes it a bit hard to read.

Thirdly, the reference to the ellipse seems to be in a silly place. If there’s two subscriptions, that variable reference will get overwritten quite quickly. I’m sure that there should be some way we can leverage the let keyword to introduce a variable to the linq expression that will mean the correct ellipse reference is available to both the mouse move and mouse up handlers

How would you write this code?

Answer 1

To avoid subscrition side-effects, you should publish your observable. I think something like this would be Ok:

        public MainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        var mouseDown = Observable
            .FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown");
        var mouseUp = Observable
            .FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp");
        var mouseMove = Observable
            .FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove");

        var ellipses = mouseDown
            .Select(args => new { 
                a = args, 
                el = new Ellipse
                {
                    Width = 10, Height = 10, Fill = Brushes.Red
                }})
            .Publish();

        ellipses
            .Subscribe(elargs =>
            {
                var position = elargs.a.EventArgs.GetPosition(canvas);
                Canvas.SetLeft(elargs.el, position.X);
                Canvas.SetTop(elargs.el, position.Y);
                canvas.Children.Add(elargs.el);
            });

        var elmove = from elargs in ellipses
                     from mm in mouseMove.TakeUntil(mouseUp)
                     select new { a = mm, el = elargs.el };

        elmove.
            Subscribe(elargs =>
            {
                var position = elargs.a.EventArgs.GetPosition(canvas);
                Canvas.SetLeft(elargs.el, position.X);
                Canvas.SetTop(elargs.el, position.Y);
            });

        var elmup = from elargs in ellipses
                    from mup in mouseUp
                    select elargs.el;

        elmup.Subscribe(el => el.Fill = Brushes.Green);

        ellipses.Connect();
    }