Targeted cross-controller events and actions

[HectorMF]

Hey all,

I've just started learning Stimulus’s cross-controller event system, and while its functionality is neat, I'm curious how others are solving some basic scenarios I expected to work out of the box. Just as a trivial example, assume the controllers are totally separate and the buttons dispatch their own custom button:click events

Scenario 1: Global Listening

In this example, the dialog listens for any dispatched button:click events and opens accordingly. This works great, but has limited use cases for me

<button id="button_1">Button 1</button>
<button id="button_2">Button 2</button>

<div id="dialog" data-action="button:click@window->dialog#open"></div>

Scenario 2: Filtering by Specific Selector

I expected to be able to filter events by the event.target so that the dialog only reacts when a specific button (e.g., #button-1) is clicked. However, this is not possible

<button id="button-1">Button 1</button>
<button id="button-2">Button 2</button>

<div id="dialog" data-action="button:click@#button-1->dialog#open"></div>

Similarly, it would be nice to be able to use any selector to listen for arbitrary events

<button id="button-1" class="odd">Button 1</button>
<button id="button-2" class="even">Button 2</button>
<button id="button-3" class="odd">Button 3</button>
<button id="button-4" class="even">Button 4</button>

<div id="dialog" data-action="button:click@button.even->dialog#open"></div>

Scenario 3: Calling an Action on a Specific controller

It would be amazing to call an action on an external controller. For example, this button could trigger the dialog’s open method directly.

<button id="button_1" data-action="click->dialog[#dialog_1]#open">Button 1</button>
<button id="button_1" data-action="click->dialog[#dialog_2]#open">Button 1</button>

<div id="dialog_1"></div>
<div id="dialog_2"></div>

Is everyone simply writing additional controllers every time some controllers need to interact?
Any insights or alternative patterns would be greatly appreciated!