Visibility Class

[as3_novice]

I am trying to create a class that will set the visibility of all movieClips to false by default. I would like to call a function like showClip(box_mc, triangle_mc) and change the visibility of just these movieClips to true. I have started creating my "Cloak class" but definitely need some guidance. The errors vary based on several attempts I've made but here is what I have thus far.

 
package 
{ 
import flash.display.MovieClip; 
public class Cloak extends MovieClip
{ 
public function Cloak() 
 { 
 box.visible = false;
    
 } 
 
 public function showClip(clipName:String):void
      {
        var c = clipName;
        c.visible = true;
      }
} 
}

[jwopitz]

rather than create a new class to change one property, I would probably make a utility type class that says something like:

static public function changeVisibility (isVisible:Boolean ...args):void
{
   var mc:MovieClip;
   var collection:Array = args[0] is Array ? args[0] as Array : args;
   for each (mc in collection)
       mc.visible = isVisible;
}

That is if you want to batch edit a whole bunch of MovieClips. If you plan to do only one or two, then I would suggest just editing them as MovieClips and forgo creating a new class. What's one extra line of code?

[jwopitz]

also for more information about the ...(rest) thing check this out - http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/arguments.html

[as3_novice]

I tried to implement your code, but i'm obviously doing something wrong. I continue to get this error : 1061: Call to a possibly undefined method changeVisibilty through a reference with static type Class.

Here is the my code:

 
package 
{ 
 import flash.display.MovieClip; 
 public class Cloak extends MovieClip
 { 
  public function Cloak() 
  { 
 
 
  } 
 
  static public function changeVisibility (isVisible:Boolean, ...args):void
  {
      var mc:MovieClip;
       var collection:Array = args[0] is Array ? args[0] as Array : args;
       for each (mc in collection)
       mc.visible = isVisible;
  }
 } 
}

I am implementing the class as such:

 
Cloak.changeVisibility(false,box_mc,triangle_mc);

Please advise accordingly, thanks for your help thus far.

[as3_novice]

Silly me, I had mispelled "visibility" when calling the method. I also needed to add a comma "," after the first arg. Thanks a million!!!!

[theCodeBot]

There's a really easy way to set it all to invisible by default. Use override and super()
And the ...args is the perfect approach Class would look kinda like this:

package {
 public class Cloak extends MovieClip {
  public override function addChild(mc:MovieClip) {
   //Changes the built-in addChild to also make the clip invisible
   super();
   mc.visible = false;
  }
  public static function changeVis(vis:Boolean, ...clips) {
   for(var i=0;i<clips.length;i++) {
    try{clips[i].visible=vis;}
    catch(e:Error) {/*wasn't a movieclip, try next one*/}
   }
  }
 }
}