removeListener

Removes the specified listener from the listener array for the event named eventName.

const callback = (stream) => {
  console.log('someone connected!');
};
server.on('connection', callback);
// ...
server.removeListener('connection', callback);

removeListener() will remove, at most, one instance of a listener from the listener array. If any single listener has been added multiple times to the listener array for the specified eventName, then removeListener() must be called multiple times to remove each instance.

Once an event is emitted, all listeners attached to it at the time of emitting are called in order. This implies that any removeListener() or removeAllListeners() calls after emitting and before the last listener finishes execution will not remove them fromemit() in progress. Subsequent events behave as expected.

import { EventEmitter } from 'node:events';
class MyEmitter extends EventEmitter {}
const myEmitter = new MyEmitter();

const callbackA = () => {
  console.log('A');
  myEmitter.removeListener('event', callbackB);
};

const callbackB = () => {
  console.log('B');
};

myEmitter.on('event', callbackA);

myEmitter.on('event', callbackB);

// callbackA removes listener callbackB but it will still be called.
// Internal listener array at time of emit [callbackA, callbackB]
myEmitter.emit('event');
// Prints:
//   A
//   B

// callbackB is now removed.
// Internal listener array [callbackA]
myEmitter.emit('event');
// Prints:
//   A

Because listeners are managed using an internal array, calling this will change the position indices of any listener registered after the listener being removed. This will not impact the order in which listeners are called, but it means that any copies of the listener array as returned by the emitter.listeners() method will need to be recreated.

When a single function has been added as a handler multiple times for a single event (as in the example below), removeListener() will remove the most recently added instance. In the example the once('ping') listener is removed:

import { EventEmitter } from 'node:events';
const ee = new EventEmitter();

function pong() {
  console.log('pong');
}

ee.on('ping', pong);
ee.once('ping', pong);
ee.removeListener('ping', pong);

ee.emit('ping');
ee.emit('ping');

Returns a reference to the EventEmitter, so that calls can be chained.