Defining A Collection Property; Simple Collection Example - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING COMPONENTS Use Manual

This appendix contains the following sections:

Defining a collection property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960

Simple collection example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960

Defining the class for a collection item. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962
Accessing collection information programmatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
Exporting components that have collections to SWC files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964
Using a component that has a collection property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 965
Defining a collection property
You define a collection property by using the Collection tag in a component's ActionScript file.
For more information, see
Note: This section assumes that you know how to create components and inspectable component
properties.
To define a collection property:
Create a FLA file for your component.
1.
See "Creating a component movie clip" on page
Create an ActionScript class.
2.
See "Creating the ActionScript class file" on page
In the ActionScript class, insert a Collection metadata tag.
3.
For more information, see
Define and
4.
get
Add the utilities classes to your FLA file by selecting Windows > Other Panels > Common
5.
Libraries > Classes and dragging UtilsClasses into the component's library.
UtilsClasses contains the mx.utils.* package for the Collection interface.
Note: Because UtilsClasses is associated with the FLA file, not the ActionScript class, Flash
throws compiler errors when you check syntax while viewing the component's ActionScript class.
Code a class that contains the collection item properties.
6.
See "Defining the class for a collection item" on page
Simple collection example
The following is a simple example of a component class file called MyShelf.as. This example
contains a collection property along with a minimal set of imports, methods, and declarations for
a component that inherits from the UIObject class.
If you import mx.utils.* in this example, the class names from mx.utils no longer need to be fully
qualified. For instance, mx.utils.Collection can be written Collection.
import mx.utils.*;
// standard class declaration
960 Appendix: Collection Properties
"About the Collection tag" on page
"About the Collection tag" on page
methods for the collection in the component's ActionScript file.
set
942.
927.
930.
942.
962.