using concatenation in getUrl during loop?

Question

I would like to write Actionscript loop that involves "getURL". However, from what I can see getURL does not allow concatenation of variable names?

I have variables textholder0, textholder1, textholder2 that have movieclip names as values and link0, link1, link2 that have website addresses as values.

I can use this["textholder" + 0].onRelease but getURL("link"+ 0) gives "undefined"

textholder0.onRelease = function()
{   
    getURL(link0);
}

textholder1.onRelease = function()
{
    getURL(link1);
}
textholder2.onRelease = function()
{
    getURL(link2);
}

Any way to do this so I can create a loop for the above?

Here is a test. Unfortunately, it still gives me "undefined/" for the URL. To keep it simple I created three movie clips, with instances textholder0, textholder1, textholder2. Put a loop on the main timeline.

var links:Array = ["http://www.google.ca", "http://www.google.com", "http://www.google.ru"];

for(var i:Number=0; i<links.length; i++){
    this["textholder" + i].linkURL = links[i];
    this["textholder" + i].onRelease = function() { 
        getURL(linkURL); 
    }    
}

Here is output from debugger window

Variable _level0.links = [object #1, class 'Array'] [
    0:"http://www.google.ca",
    1:"http://www.google.com",
    2:"http://www.google.ru"   ] 
Variable _level0.i = 3 
Movie Clip: Target="_level0.textholder0" 
Variable _level0.textholder0.linkURL = "http://www.google.ca" 
Variable _level0.textholder0.onRelease = [function 'onRelease'] 
Movie Clip: Target="_level0.textholder1" 
Variable _level0.textholder1.linkURL = "http://www.google.com" 
Variable _level0.textholder1.onRelease = [function 'onRelease'] 
Movie Clip: Target="_level0.textholder2" 
Variable _level0.textholder2.linkURL = "http://www.google.ru" 
Variable _level0.textholder2.onRelease = [function 'onRelease']

I am starting to think that you can not use onRelease within a loop at all.

Lars Blåsjö · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-01 15:42:27Z

0

getURL("link"+ 0) will try to go to a URL "link0", since "link"+ 0 will be concatenated to the string "link0", and not get the value of link0. But you can try doing this:

getURL(this["link" + 0]);

The difference, and the mechanism of the bracket notation, is that you can reference a property of an object in two ways - using dot notation, like this.link0, or the bracket notation, this["link0"]. But it has to be expressed as an object property, just saying "link" + 0 anywhere, like in getURL("link"+ 0) won't give a reference to link0.

answered Sep 1, 2013 at 15:42

Lars Blåsjö

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1 Comment

Natalia Over a year ago

by using the line above getURL(this["link" + 0]); I get "undefined"

Natalia · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-05 20:13:09Z

0

ok, so I think the problem with the loop here is that it was incrementing "i" variable before any of the buttons were clicked.

http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/faq/#loopfunctions

Senocular.com says "you need to define a new, unique variable to represent that value at the time of function creation and have the function reference that value"

So the loop goes as following

var links:Array = ["http://www.google.ca", "http://www.google.com", "http://www.google.ru"];

var curr_button;

for(var i=0; i<=links.length; i++){
    curr_button = this["textholder"+i];
    //note creation of an extra variable "num" below to store the temp number 
    curr_button.num = i;
    curr_button.onRelease = function() { 
        getURL(links[this.num]); 
    }    
}

edited Sep 5, 2013 at 20:13

answered Sep 5, 2013 at 19:50

Natalia

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