Is there a better way to get hold of a reference to a movie clip in actionscript using a string without eval
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02-07-2019 - |
Question
I have created a bunch of movie clips which all have similar names and then after some other event I have built up a string like:
var clipName = "barLeft42"
which is held inside another movie clip called 'thing'.
I have been able to get hold of a reference using:
var movieClip = Eval( "_root.thing." + clipName )
But that feels bad - is there a better way?
Solution
Movie clips are collections in actionscript (like most and similar to javascript, everything is basically key-value pairs). You can index into the collection using square brackets and a string for the key name like:
_root.thing[ "barLeft42" ]
That should do the trick for you...
OTHER TIPS
The better way, which avoids using the deprecated eval
, is to index with square brackets:
var movieClip = _root.thing[ "barLeft42" ]
But the best way is to keep references to the clips you make, and access them by reference, rather than by name:
var movieClipArray = new Array();
for (var i=0; i<45; i++) {
var mc = _root.thing.createEmptyMovieClip( "barLeft"+i, i );
// ...
movieClipArray.push( mc );
}
// ...
var movieClip = movieClipArray[ 42 ];
You can use brackets and include variables within them... so if you wanted to loop through them all you can do this:
for (var i=0; i<99; i++) {
var clipName = _root.thing["barLeft"+i];
}