bevy/release-content/migration-guides
Joona Aalto e5dc177b4b
Rename Trigger to On (#19596)
# Objective

Currently, the observer API looks like this:

```rust
app.add_observer(|trigger: Trigger<Explode>| {
    info!("Entity {} exploded!", trigger.target());
});
```

Future plans for observers also include "multi-event observers" with a
trigger that looks like this (see [Cart's
example](https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/issues/14649#issuecomment-2960402508)):

```rust
trigger: Trigger<(
    OnAdd<Pressed>,
    OnRemove<Pressed>,
    OnAdd<InteractionDisabled>,
    OnRemove<InteractionDisabled>,
    OnInsert<Hovered>,
)>,
```

In scenarios like this, there is a lot of repetition of `On`. These are
expected to be very high-traffic APIs especially in UI contexts, so
ergonomics and readability are critical.

By renaming `Trigger` to `On`, we can make these APIs read more cleanly
and get rid of the repetition:

```rust
app.add_observer(|trigger: On<Explode>| {
    info!("Entity {} exploded!", trigger.target());
});
```

```rust
trigger: On<(
    Add<Pressed>,
    Remove<Pressed>,
    Add<InteractionDisabled>,
    Remove<InteractionDisabled>,
    Insert<Hovered>,
)>,
```

Names like `On<Add<Pressed>>` emphasize the actual event listener nature
more than `Trigger<OnAdd<Pressed>>`, and look cleaner. This *also* frees
up the `Trigger` name if we want to use it for the observer event type,
splitting them out from buffered events (bikeshedding this is out of
scope for this PR though).

For prior art:
[`bevy_eventlistener`](https://github.com/aevyrie/bevy_eventlistener)
used
[`On`](https://docs.rs/bevy_eventlistener/latest/bevy_eventlistener/event_listener/struct.On.html)
for its event listener type. Though in our case, the observer is the
event listener, and `On` is just a type containing information about the
triggered event.

## Solution

Steal from `bevy_event_listener` by @aevyrie and use `On`.

- Rename `Trigger` to `On`
- Rename `OnAdd` to `Add`
- Rename `OnInsert` to `Insert`
- Rename `OnReplace` to `Replace`
- Rename `OnRemove` to `Remove`
- Rename `OnDespawn` to `Despawn`

## Discussion

### Naming Conflicts??

Using a name like `Add` might initially feel like a very bad idea, since
it risks conflict with `core::ops::Add`. However, I don't expect this to
be a big problem in practice.

- You rarely need to actually implement the `Add` trait, especially in
modules that would use the Bevy ECS.
- In the rare cases where you *do* get a conflict, it is very easy to
fix by just disambiguating, for example using `ops::Add`.
- The `Add` event is a struct while the `Add` trait is a trait (duh), so
the compiler error should be very obvious.

For the record, renaming `OnAdd` to `Add`, I got exactly *zero* errors
or conflicts within Bevy itself. But this is of course not entirely
representative of actual projects *using* Bevy.

You might then wonder, why not use `Added`? This would conflict with the
`Added` query filter, so it wouldn't work. Additionally, the current
naming convention for observer events does not use past tense.

### Documentation

This does make documentation slightly more awkward when referring to
`On` or its methods. Previous docs often referred to `Trigger::target`
or "sends a `Trigger`" (which is... a bit strange anyway), which would
now be `On::target` and "sends an observer `Event`".

You can see the diff in this PR to see some of the effects. I think it
should be fine though, we may just need to reword more documentation to
read better.
2025-06-12 18:22:33 +00:00
..
.gitkeep
anchor_is_removed_from_sprite.md Fix Anchor component inconsistancies (#18393) 2025-05-21 15:32:04 +00:00
camera_restructure.md Split Camera.hdr out into a new component (#18873) 2025-05-26 19:24:45 +00:00
component_entry.md Rename bevy_ecs::world::Entry to ComponentEntry (#19517) 2025-06-10 01:12:40 +00:00
component-lifecycle-module.md Rename Trigger to On (#19596) 2025-06-12 18:22:33 +00:00
delete_component_access.md Delete System::component_access(). (#19496) 2025-06-09 22:54:52 +00:00
dragenter_includes_dragged_entity.md don't filter dragged entity out of DragEnter events (#19179) 2025-05-26 17:56:54 +00:00
entities_apis.md Remove invalid entity locations (#19433) 2025-05-31 16:34:33 +00:00
entity_representation.md Fix new typos (#19562) 2025-06-09 22:55:14 +00:00
generic-option-parameter.md Generic SystemParam impls for Option and Result (#18766) 2025-05-07 18:20:08 +00:00
interned-labels-cleanup.md Remove upcasting methods + Cleanup interned label code (#18984) 2025-05-26 15:38:12 +00:00
labeled_asset_scope_errors.md Allow returning an error from labeled_asset_scope. (#19449) 2025-06-04 00:00:32 +00:00
log-diagnostics-hash-set.md Expose LogDiagnosticsState (#19323) 2025-05-23 20:56:36 +00:00
merge_observerState_observer_single_component.md Merge ObserverState and Observer into single component (#18728) 2025-05-06 00:12:27 +00:00
observer_triggers.md Rename Trigger to On (#19596) 2025-06-12 18:22:33 +00:00
observers_may_not_be_exclusive.md Prevent exclusive systems from being used as observers (#19033) 2025-05-05 17:46:25 +00:00
overflowclipbox_default_is_now_paddingbox.md
per-world-error-handler.md Per world error handler (#18810) 2025-05-19 01:35:07 +00:00
picking_location_not_component.md fix(picking): Location is not a Component anymore. (#19306) 2025-05-22 01:33:01 +00:00
relative_cursor_position_is_object_centered.md Specialized UI transform (#16615) 2025-06-09 19:05:49 +00:00
remove_archetype_component_id.md Remove ArchetypeComponentId and archetype_component_access (#19143) 2025-05-27 19:04:32 +00:00
remove_archetypecomponentid.md Stop using ArchetypeComponentId in the executor (#16885) 2025-05-05 22:52:44 +00:00
remove_cosmic_text_reexports.md Remove re-exports of cosmic_text types (#19516) 2025-06-06 21:49:02 +00:00
remove_deprecated_batch_spawning.md Fix new typos (#19562) 2025-06-09 22:55:14 +00:00
remove_the_add_sub_impls_on_volume.md fix: Ensure linear volume subtraction does not go below zero (#19423) 2025-06-05 03:59:20 +00:00
rename_condition.md Rename Condition to SystemCondition` (#19328) 2025-05-22 15:50:19 +00:00
rename_pointer_events.md Rename some pointer events and components (#19574) 2025-06-10 21:57:28 +00:00
rename_spawn_gltf_material_name.md Add GltfMeshName component and Deref implementations (#19331) 2025-05-23 20:56:48 +00:00
rename_state_scoped.md Refactor state scoped events to match entities. (#19435) 2025-05-31 20:14:14 +00:00
rename_timer_paused_and_finished.md Rename Timer::finished and Timer::paused to is_finished and is_paused (#19386) 2025-05-27 22:24:18 +00:00
rename-justifytext.md Rename JustifyText to Justify (#19522) 2025-06-09 19:59:48 +00:00
scalar-field-on-vector-space.md Improve Bevy's double-precision story for third-party crates (#19194) 2025-06-08 02:02:47 +00:00
separate-border-colors.md separate border colors (#18682) 2025-05-26 16:57:13 +00:00
simple_executor_going_away.md deprecate SimpleExecutor (#18753) 2025-05-06 00:21:57 +00:00
specialized_ui_transform.md Specialized UI transform (#16615) 2025-06-09 19:05:49 +00:00
state_scoped_entities_by_default.md Enable state scoped entities by default (#19354) 2025-05-26 20:26:41 +00:00
sync_cell_utils.md refactor(utils): move SyncCell and SyncUnsafeCell to bevy_platform (#19305) 2025-05-27 04:57:26 +00:00
system_set_naming_convention.md Adopt consistent FooSystems naming convention for system sets (#18900) 2025-05-06 15:18:03 +00:00
taa_non_experimental.md Make TAA non-experimental, fixes (#18349) 2025-06-02 16:04:08 +00:00
unified_system_state_flag.md Unify system state (#19506) 2025-06-08 18:18:43 +00:00