onLayerAdd function why dojo.connect?

Question

I am building a map application, calling layers from an arcgis-server using the javascript api.

Maybe I am being stubborn, but I am trying to minimize my use of dojo throughout this process. Much of my previous experience has been using other APIs like cartoDb, google maps and I prefer using jquery and pure javaScript.

I am going to build a dynamic list of layers and legend items by iterating through the layerInfos of the dynamicMapServiceLayer that I have added to my map.

I have found that I cannot itterate through the layerInfos until after the layer has been added to the map. To detect this I am using the onLayerAdd event. The only way I've been able to use the onLayerAdd event is to also use a dojo.connect

dojo.connect(map, "onLayerAdd",testFunction);

Do I have to use dojo.connect? If so why? It seems like it would make more sense to do something like

map.onLayerAdd(testFunction)

Thanks in advance....

Answer 1

Have you looked at this sample of using jquery with arcgis javascript api?

It says "When building applications with frameworks other than Dojo, you still need to use dojo to connect to map events. In this snippet, we connect to the map's onLoad event and then call .ready().The .ready() method is automatically called when the DOM is fully loaded."

dojo.connect(map, "onLoad", function() {
    console.log("Map onLoad event");
    $(document).ready(jQueryReady);
});
dojo.connect(map, "onLayerAdd", function() {
    console.log("Map onLayerAdd event");
});

http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/javascript/arcgis/jssamples/#sample/framework_jquery

I can understand wanting to use another framework for different reasons, but as @Jamie says the arcgis api is built with dojo and is already loaded. There is no performance penalty at that point. You can also use the compact build as mentioned in the above sample which exludes dijits and would be a smaller download.