Assigning Data to a Shared Object using a Variable's content as the identifier

Question

I have been musing over this problem for the past few days, and whilst I can find other people that have had issues that kind of revolve around the use of dynamic variable names, none of the solutions quite work for what I am trying to do.

I have been using a shared object (for this purposed name sfSaveData) to create a local save file. This same system has been used quite happily across several projects, but the code isn't overly portable. That is to say that for each project, I have to completely change the class file to incorporate each of the settings/data to be stored. So I have this brainwave - rather than manually changing the class that creates/updates the local save file, I will put the necessary changes in an XML file, and have a class that loops through the XML and creates the necessary data within the shared object.

I have sussed out the XML side of things, my problem is getting the results to correctly reference the shared object. Here's what I have that is working properly:

For completeness, this is an extract from the XML file, at the moment to get this working I am only working with this one entry in the file (no point in adding in more data until it's working)

<dataField label = "dataField">
    <dataTitle label = "dataTitle">locationArray</dataTitle>
    <dataType label = "dataType">Array</dataLabel>
    <dataContent label = "dataContent">[true, true, true, true, true]</dataContent>
</dataField>

NOTES: DataPass is a custom event which allows the passing of data with the event. In this instance it passes a variable containing the XML content. The data is accessible via the variable event.datPass. This is transferring correctly.

This is in a class file (SaveDataHandler) and the file which contains the shared object is InGameSettings. SaveDataHandler is created as an instance. InGameSettings is a Public Class filled with Public Static Vars (including sfSaveData:SharedObject). And for what it is worth, the folder structure is /data/SaveDataHandler and /setting/InGameSettings.

function processSaveXML(event:DataPass):void {
    var outputString;
    for each (var dataField.XML in event.datPass) {
        outputString = (InGameSettings.sfSaveData.data." + dataField.dataTitle);
        /*
        * This is where it all goes wrong ;)
        * To access outputString's content as the variable name, I use "this".
        * I realise that this causes outputString to relate to the SaveDataHandler
        * class rather than the InGameSettings class - which is part of the problem
        */
        this[outputString] = dataField.dataContent;
        InGameSettings.sfSaveData.flush();
    } // for each loop
}  // function processSaveXML

Now if I manually type in one of the variable names - for instance

InGameSettings.sfSaveData.LocationArray = dataField.dataContent

instead of

this[outputString] = dataField.dataContent

It works fine. My problem is that I don't know how to get the content of outputString to be used as the identifier for the variable on a different class. What I get is the error message:

ReferenceError: Error #1056: Cannot create property InGameSettings.sfSaveData.data.locationArray on data.SaveDataHandler.

So, if you can point me in the right direction, I'd be most appreciative. I've lost a lot of hair this week because of this, but I really want to get this working to neaten up a nasty hack in my code where all of this is hard coded into the SaveDataHandler class.

Answer 1

function processSaveXML(event:DataPass):void {
var outputString;
for each (var dataField.XML in event.datPass) {
    outputString = dataField.dataTitle;

    InGameSettings.sfSaveData.data[outputString] = dataField.dataContent;
    // the trick is here. You need to refer "data" of the SO, and then add
    // what's in brackets to make a dynamic property.
    InGameSettings.sfSaveData.flush();
} // for each loop
}  // function processSaveXML