Properly Referencing Your Main Class in Flash Actionscript
Posted on December 19th, 2008 by KenKFor those of you moving from Actionscript 2 to 3 (with a heavier focus on proper object-oriented principles), you may find that accessing your Main class and Stage isn’t as straight-forward. In this post we’ll highlight organizing your classes to properly reference your main class. First, let’s take a look at our Main class:
package {
import flash.display.Stage;
import flash.display.MovieClip;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
private static var _instance:Main = null;
public function Main() {
_instance = this;
}
public static function getInstance():Main { return _instance; }
public static function getStage():Stage { return getInstance().stage; }
}
}
First we define a static variable, _instance, to hold a static reference to Main. We are assuming throughout this that we will use Main statically. In other words, there will only be a single instance of our Main class. Next, in our constructor, we use the line _instance = this; to set our static version of Main to the one that is created when the constructor is called.
We will use two methods to get access to Main and the main stage. First, getInstace() is a static function that always returns a copy of _instance. If you want the stage instead, use getStage(). All getStage() does differently from getInstance() is return the stage property of _instance rather than the object itself. Using this format simplifies your code in other classes.
Now let’s say you want to use these functions in other classes to add something to the stage. Let’s pretend we have a Tree class that needs to add itself to the main stage when it is created. You could use this code:
package {
import flash.display.Sprite;</code>
public class Tree extends Sprite {
Main.getStage().addChild(this);
x = Math.random() * Main.getStage().stageWidth;
y = Math.random() * Main.getStage().stageWidth;
}
}
You can see that we can easily get properties of the stage (stageWidth and stageHeight) simply by statically referencing Main. Note that we could have used the following lines instead:
x = Math.random() * Main.getInstance().stage.stageWidth;
y = Math.random() * Main.getInstance().stage.stageWidth;
It really just depends on which example you find more elegant. One additional benefit of using the techniques described here is that you can use the getInstance() to determine if Main has loaded. Simply do:
if (Main.getInstance() != null) { /* some function */ }
Hope that gives you an easy framework for accessing your stage and Main class in AS3!
January 5th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Ken, This is fun stuff! Cool Flash Tips!
January 18th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
If your in pinch and you want to do it fast and dirty you could also do something like this.
http://blog.robertabramski.com/2008/03/08/referencing-the-document-class/
At the time of writing this, this worked, but I see now this technique is better. Good OOP would also say to make your document class a Singleton class as well. Unlike some other ECMA languages like JavaScript, ActionScript doesn’t have private constructors, but there are workarounds.
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/07/as3_singletons.html
January 19th, 2009 at 9:25 am
I actually wasn’t aware of those two methods of reference, Robert. Thanks for the info and the Singleton reminder!