Best way to make re-usable particle effects?

[Jacob Vann]

I'm starting to add particle effects to my HaxeFlixel project.  Right now, I'm just adding the code to create the emitters and particles to the object that users them.  So, if I have a "bullet" class that needs to have a trail particle effect or an explosion particle effect, I'm adding all that to the bullet class, and killing/reviving the particle effect as needed.  I'm sure this is not the best way to do it, but wanted to ask you guys for ideas.

Is there a way to add a global particle-effect resource class, similar to the FlxG.sound class, so that I can register and assign particle effects by name, and then just call the particle effect as needed, with something like:

FlxG.particleEffects.play("explosion", x, y);

Has anyone had luck implementing something similar?  The good thing about separating management of particle effects into their own class is you can add a plug-in to load particle effect definitions from a text file so you can tweak your particle effects in a third party tool and then re-run the game without having to recompile. 

And, if I implemented something like FlxG.particleEffects myself, how would I handle playing the same particle effect more than once?  I'm assuming the play() function would actually clone a new instance of the emitter and all the particles, and then destroy it when the effect is done?

I guess I'm looking for suggestions to better manage dozens of particle effects without having all the code for creating those effects scattered throughout my code base.

Thanks!