Comments on: How to Reference Objects Dynamically

By: nick

nick — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:45:32 +0000

hello,
I am trying to find a way to use eval() to get the name from an array to the variable assigned to a dynamic text box and then set the :string for that dynamic text box

var this[tempLanguage[i]]:String = dataSetLanguage[1][2];

sorry I know I should probably be able to figure out from the information above.

By: Tiemen

Tiemen — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:04:52 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I have been doing a LOT of flash lately, making comforting jumps in level, but though I understand what you’re doing, it does not actually make sense. For this example, the variable I want to set is a semi-global one, defined in the main timeline. Flash doesn’t convert the i in the onRelease handler to a static number, which I thought it should when it’s used inside a for loop.

So it writes a handler function like this, which finds when invoked, the out-serviced i variable lying around at 9

d3_mc.onRelease = function() {
var_num = i;
trace(i); // traces 9, which makes sense
}

It should’v been this though:

d3_mc.onRelease = function() {
var_num = 3;
trace(3);
}

So what you mean by scope, is that “i” cannot be used on the right side of the equation inside a function declaration?

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:11:53 +0000

Tiemen,

I’m going through my notes, man, and I honestly can’t find (i.e., can’t remember) if I replied to you about the Key event listener. I hope I did! I’ve been going insane lately with ridiculous schedule conflicts.

As for the “lazy code” question, I think it’s an issue of scope. Check out this revision:

for (var i:Number = 1; i < 9; i++) {
  this["d" + i + "_mc"].var_num = i;
  this["d" + i + "_mc"].onRelease = function() {
    trace(this.var_num);
    gotoAndStop(4);
  };
}
I resisted the urge to add strong typing.     But this does what you want.

By: Tiemen

Tiemen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:33:50 +0000

well, trust me that the for loop is correct, for i iterates over 8.

By: Tiemen

Tiemen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:31:51 +0000

Hmm here's me again with a small silly question. Why won't this lazy code work?

for (var i:Number = 1; i
  this["d"+ i +"_mc"].onRelease = function() {
    var_num = i;
    trace(var_num);
    gotoAndStop(4);
  }
}

Clicking on any of the 8 buttons traces "9", which pretty much baffles me.

By: Tiemen

Tiemen — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:31:40 +0000

Next day I had this solved. I still don't understand how this works exactly, as there seem many roads that lead to Rome. The one I used in this case with the createEmptyMovieClip was: reference = this.createEmptyMovieClip(i +"_mc", this.getNextHighestDepth()); reference._x = something_crazy; But this one has no (obvious) affiliation with any of the methods you mentioned! I couldn't get a this[] or eval() notation to work within a Key. event anyway...?!

By: Tiemen

Tiemen — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:37:48 +0000

Incredible… I’ve been stuck for over two hours now on the dynamic creation of movieclips. For some reason

for (var i:Number = 0; i [code snipped by WordPress]

inside a onKeyUp event really doesn't want to work. Outside the onKeyUp, it does.
It's driving me crazy...

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:46:38 +0000

P.J., This is an issue of scope. You're declaring a variable named token inside the scope of this function, notify(), yet in the condition of your if statement, you're referencing _root.token which, contrary to your expectations, is trying to reference a completely different token variable; namely, the non-existent one scoped to the main timeline (_root). Does that make sense? You've got two token references going, one of which doesn't exist. The one you're referencing in the condition doesn't exist. If you want to reference _root as your container object, I recommend you go with the array access operator instead:

function notify() {
  for (n=1;n<7;n++) {
    if (_root.jv_mc.hitTest(_root["tkn" + n]) {
      notice_mc.gotoAndPlay(2);
    }
  }
}

By: P.J.

P.J. — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:50:52 +0000

I don't seem to have any luck getting variables to work. I have six identical movieclips on the stage and I would like to include them all in certain functions/statements. Right now, I had to settle for writing out an identical statement for each instance and that works fine. But it's very time consuming, especially for more complex if/else statements, and the resulting code is very unwieldy to say the least. So if the movieclips are named tkn1 through tkn6 and I want to execute a certain code whenever any of these clips are intersecting with a movieclip named jv_mc, I tried the following and it did nothing.

function notify() {
  var token:MovieClip;
  for (n=1;n<7;n++) {
    token = eval("tkn"+n)
    //the condition/statement
    if (_root.jv_mc.hitTest(_root.token)) {
      notice_mc.gotoAndPlay(2);
    }
  }
}

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:15:34 +0000

Billy,

Glad to help!