Use

Instances of Observation are rarely created directly. Instead, use can-compute's more friendly API to observe when a function's value changes. can-compute uses can-observation internally.

Observation's static methods like: add, ignore, and trap are used more commonly to control which observable events a compute will listen to.

To use can-observation directly, create something observable (supports addEventListener) and calls add like:

var Observation = require("can-observation");
var assign = require("can-util/js/assign/assign");
var canEvent = require("can-event");

var me = assign({}, canEvent);

var name = "Justin";
Object.defineProperty(me,"name",{
  get: function(){
    Observation.add(this,"name");
    return name;
  },
  set: function(newVal) {
    var oldVal = name;
    name = newVal;
    this.dispatch("name", newVal, oldVal);
  }
})

Next, create an observation instance with a function that reads the observable value:

var observation = new Observation(function(){
  return "Hello "+me.name;
}, null, function(newVal, oldVal, batchNum){
  console.log(newVal);
})

Finally, call observation.start() to start listening and be notified of changes:

observation.start();
observation.value   //-> "Hello Justin";
me.name = "Ramiya"; // console.logs -> "Hello Ramiya"