---
myst:
  html_meta:
    description: "Configure Melder's disposal methods, understand cleanup order and failure handling, and follow examples of resource and memory ownership."
---

# Cleanup and memory ownership

<sub>**Beginner.** Cleanup without ceremony.</sub>

**Excerpt.** Define the connection and worker classes with their cleanup methods
first. Registration declares how to dispose them; `meld()` creates the instances
whose matched methods run when the conduit ends.

Declare your teardown **vocabulary** — the method names that mean "clean
yourself up" in this system — and Melder calls them on the way down. No base
class, no protocol, no context-manager ceremony:

```python
book = md.Spellbook()

book.bind(
    spell=PooledConnection,
    existence="unique",
    disposal_method_names=["close", "shutdown"],   # this binding's ordered methods
)
book.bind(
    spell=BackgroundWorker,
    existence="unique",
    disposal_method_names=["shutdown"],
)

conduit = book.conjure()
connection = conduit.meld("PooledConnection")
worker = conduit.meld("BackgroundWorker")
conduit.cleanup()     # calls each creation's matched methods in their declared order
```

Each bind's list belongs to **that spell**, not every later bind. Melder resolves
matching class methods once at bind time and preserves their order:

- If the connection implements both names, `close()` runs before `shutdown()`.
- The worker uses its own `shutdown()` declaration.
- Missing names are omitted; duplicate names execute once.

For book-wide methods, use `SpellbookConfiguration`. Its matching methods form
one ordered block: last by default, or first with
`with_enforce_priority_disposal_methods(True)`. Shared names belong to the book's
block in either mode; spell-only names retain their own order. See the
[configuration guide](../intermediate/configuration.md)
for both arrangements.

Within each store, objects are disposed newest first, so a dependency outlives the
objects built on it. A failing method does not stop the others: every declared
method of every object runs, each failure is chained from what the method raised,
and they are raised together as one `ExceptionGroup` once the scope has ended.
A `managed_spell_quantity` return normally resets the object for reuse. Its
disposal methods run when the pool destroys it — an `elastic` trim, a reset
that raises, or the root's teardown.

## Runnable examples

- [Disposal contract](../examples/beginner/08-disposal-contract.md) — Beginner 08
- [Explicit cleanup](../examples/beginner/10-explicit-cleanup.md) — Beginner 10
- [Disposal multiple methods](../examples/beginner/35-disposal-multiple-methods.md) — Beginner 35
- [You own the memory now](../examples/beginner/41-you-own-the-memory-now.md) — Beginner 41

[All beginner examples](../examples/beginner/index.md) · [Level contents](index.md) · [Full contents](../contents.md)

[Canonical page source](https://github.com/Synaptic724/melder/blob/1211e838099a342c9dde48f064b1e772b6060e13/README.md)