Journal Entries

Aug 4, 2006

Fun with Flash: ‘asfunction’ calls within a Class instance.

I was having this problem. I need links within a TextArea component to call a Class method. Are you having this problem too?

You are? Cool. Here’s a solution:

private function createBodyText( mc:MovieClip, depth:Number ):Void {

     var __myBodyText = mc.createClassObject( TextArea, "myTextArea", depth );

     var myRef:ContentTemplate = this;
     mc[ 'myTextArea'].handlerFunction = function( s:String ) {
          myRef.executeFunction();
     };

     __myBodyText.text += ‘<a href=”asfunction:callFunction,wee”>My kingdom for a method.</a>’;
}

public function executeFunction():Void {
	trace( “Called!” );
}

When called within a class, ‘asfunction’ scopes to the movieclip parent of the textfield. And since the TextArea component is a textfield with a movieclip as a parent, ‘asfunction’ is calling ‘__myBodyText’ and not my class instance. The actionscript complier will toss an error if we assign the function ‘callFunction’ to ‘__myBodyText’ so we cheat and tell Flash to look for the instance called ‘myTextArea’ within ‘mc’s array of children. Same thing. Different phrasing.

Here are two other ways to handle it: Luis of Lessrain and Nathan Derksen of nathanderksen.com whom I found through random googling. [so dirty] Again, basically the same thing with different phrasing.

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