How to make an AS3 package to call a function in main timeline

[glidealong]

I am working on AS3 and I have a created a button class which have an off state and on state. I did the class and it works fine, but i need a little fine tuning. Right now I am polling the button state from the root(main timeline) by checking a boolean property in the button class. I feel it is quite inefficient to check the button state on every enterFrame event of the main timeline. Rather I would prefer the button to tell the root time line by invoking a function written in the root, whenever a state change occurs.
It should be cleaner , right??
But when I try to access a function in the root which goes like this

function setVertical(button_name:String):void{
trace("value of button is "+button_name);
}

from the button object, I get the following error

ReferenceError: Error #1069: Property setVertical not found on flash.display.Stage and there is no default value.
at ICT::genBtn/ICT:genBtn::btnClick()

:sigh:
Thanks in Advance

[glidealong]

or is it that I have to make another class to hold all the buttons and define a public function in that so that the button class can initiate the function call to the new class which does the changes on the stage??

[Dazzer]

in the realm of AS3, i believe they do discourage the use of global functions and properties. That could be just me though.

sorry I can't help you otherwise.

[glidealong]

yeah .. they don't have any globals anymore. but i figured it out at last, with some searching on the adobe website and the AS3.0 cookbook i was able to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks to all..

[Dazzer]

mind telling me, just in case I need to know in the future hehe

[senocular]

You should have the button use dispatchEvent() to broadcast a change in states. Then your main timeline can use addEventListener on that button to listen for the event and react upon a state change rather than polling for it constantly

[glidealong]

You should have the button use dispatchEvent() to broadcast a change in states. Then your main timeline can use addEventListener on that button to listen for the event and react upon a state change rather than polling for it constantly

I should have known that dispatchEvent() is supposed to be used in situations like this. Actually I did it in a different way. It's like this,
I created a document class which defines the root of the document. So when the swf starts to play the root will be defined as _root. The class I used goes like this

package ICT.Root
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
public class Root extends MovieClip
{
public static var _root:MovieClip;
public function Root ()
{
_root = this;
}
}
}

Then I imported this root class into all the other classes in the package and created a movie clip instance _root with value set to the Root object. Now I can call the functions written in various objects on the stage..

Could anybody give me a comparison on this approach and an eventDispatcher??

Thanks to all

[glidealong]

and anybody know if creating an array of objects is possible in AS3?
And if yes, I would really like to know how..
Thanks in advance

[senocular]

... just like AS2

[elmax]

i´m new to as3 and i would like to call timeline functions from within a class.
Could you show me an example of the following line:

Then I imported this root class into all the other classes in the package and created a movie clip instance _root with value set to the Root object. Now I can call the functions written in various objects on the stage..

THX,
elmax

[glidealong]

Check the attachment

[Jaspios]

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I am looking for a solution for this as well.

I played with glidealong's file above. Looks good first, but I realized that it just had the strict mode off. As soon as I turn it back on, you get all several errors and it doesn't seem to have solved the initial problem.

Does anyone have other sample files?

Thanks.

[Pier25]

Maybe you can pass a scope parameter to the class



//in the timeline code
var my_object = new my_class(this)

//in the class
class my_class(scope){
scope.my_function();
}


I don't know if that works... but have no time to check either...

[Jaspios]

Thanks, but I don't exactly know how I should use it... :(

But I found Senocular's older tip in this forum to use TopLevel class and somehow made it work. I'm a novice and don't understand how and why it works, but it's good enough for now :)

[chiqui]

Since i had trouble importing a whole new class to my site to solve this last time problem (i really hate clients) i found a faster approche like this:
In my RootClass I named a public function CalledFromTimeline(). Then in timeline or class used this code:

import RootClass; //Import the cusom root class
var myRoot:RootClass = RootClass(this.root); //make the display object my custom one
myRoot.CalledFromTimeline(); //works!