Douglas on Web Applications

AS3 MovieClip Arrays & Loops

I'm often tasked with applying the same listeners & properties to multiple MovieClips in Flash. The easiest is to store the MovieClips in an array:

 
var navButtons=[navCompanyMC,navNewsMC...];
 

Then you can simply iterate over them:

 
var i=1;
for (i in navButtons) {
  doSomethingToClip(navButtons[i]);
}
 

Sample usage:

 
public function doBuild():void {
  var navButtons=[navCompanyMC,navNewsMC...];
  var i=1;
  for (i in navButtons) {
    registerEachButton(navButtons[i]);
  }
}
function registerEachButton(clip:MovieClip):void {
  clip.buttonMode=true;
  EventManager.addEventListener(clip,MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER,doRollOver,false,0,true,true);
  EventManager.addEventListener(clip,MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT,doRollOut,false,0,true,true);
  EventManager.addEventListener(clip,MouseEvent.CLICK,doClick,false,0,true,true);
}
function doRollOver(e:Event):void {
  //trace(e.target.name)
  e.currentTarget.gotoAndStop('over');
}
function doRollOut(e:Event):void {
  trace(e.target.name);
  e.currentTarget.gotoAndStop(1);
}
function doClick(e:Event):void {
  trace(e.target.name);
}
 

Tags: array, Flash, loop, MovieClip