compile a swc in flash for use in flex, with a class written in flex

Question

OK,

It sounds complicated, but it's not. Here goes: I want to use some assets ( buttons, etc. ) I'm creating in flash in a flex actionscript project. Since all my assets are bellow 10K, I'm not planning to load a swf ,wait until it's loaded and create the interface. I want to use a swc and just instance the clips I need. Also, I want my Button class to have some extra properties, and this is where the problem occurs.

If in the Linkage Properties in the Flash IDE I add a reference to a custom Button Class and trace a child of the Button MovieClip, I get the right trace. If then I create a Button, in the Main class in Flex, using the generated swc file and trace the same child of the Button MovieClip, I get null.

Why is that ? Is there anyway to get around this ? I've considered using the Flex Component Kit, but since I'm working on a simple actionscript project and I'm not using the Flex framework, I see no point in using the Component Kit at this point.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I think I got it.

My Button MovieClip was linking to a class in the the same src folder as the rest of my actionscript code in the Flex actionscript project. (The as3 classpath was set to "../", from the assets folder where the .fla file lives, one level up to src )

When Flash compiled, the class was found and I got in the .swc file. That is why I got the symbol traced from flash. When Flex compiled, the class was found in the src directory, so a new version of the same class was compiled, although it already existed in the swc file. Since flex found the .as file, but wouldn't know I had it linked to a symbol in the Flash IDE ( I don't think it can do that ), Flex created its version of the class, but since no symbol was linked to that class, the child of Button I was tracing was null.

I guess using packages and keeping the fla linked classes separate so Flex wouldn't compile the same class twice.

The weird thing is I didn't get any warning or error, so I assumed everything was fine.

A quick and not so dirty workaround was to delete the physical Button class from the filesystem, so that Flash could generate it's version on compile time and have references to the children of the Button symbol. Then in Flex I cread a class that extends Button and added the code I needed. Since the generated class got compiled in the .swc file, Flex could see that and I had no problem extending.

That was it! Bob's you're uncle!

I assumes that what happens, I am not 100% sure. It's something my intuition takes for granted through observation, so I might be technically wrong. If anyone has any correction they're welcome.