Alexander vanRossum

If you are working with multiple layers of MovieClips, each with their own ActionScript (trust me, with dynamic projects, you can end up in a situation where MovieClips have minds actions of their own) you might come across a situation where you need to access a variable or another MovieClip from the MovieClip that owns it (as in it’s parent) or even two or more above.  (If you need to skip all the nested MCs and access a variable on the now-depricated _root read this article)

This is actually quite easy with a method called parent, utilizing the hierarchy of your MovieClips to access variables from any number of levels away from your current execution realm.

To access a variable – let’s call it myVariable – from one level up in your tree, use this:

trace( MovieClip( parent ).myVariable );

Similarly, to access a variable two or more MovieClips up in the tree, nest the parent calls accordingly.

trace( MovieClip( parent.parent ).myVariable );

You can do this ad-infinitum to the root of the whole project if you so desire, but in this case, again, I’d recommend that you read the article mentioned above.

To access other MovieClips, the process is very much the same, except instead of a variable name, you would use a MovieClip’s Instance Name followed by the property you wanted to adjust, as such:

MovieClip( parent ).myMovieClip.visible = true;

-or-

MovieClip( parent.parent.parent ).myMovieClip.gotoAndStop( 1 );

etc.

Hope this helps someone,

Cheers,

~/A\V/

Bit of a longer hiatus from this blog than I had imagined – Orange has kinda been taking up a LOT of time lately (I have quite a few articles that are non-tech related that need to be edited and then I will post) – but here’s an ActionScript Quickie:

If you need to work with a variable from the Main Timeline (formerly _root in AS2) in another MovieClip in the same project, you can do this by using the “root as MovieClip” property.  This allows you to load elements from what was _root into your current working MC. (If you only need to go one or two levels up, read this article)

Quick and dirty, in your new MC, you can test this functionality with the following:

trace((root as MovieClip).myVariable);

Replace “myVariable” with the variable you wish to access from the Main Timeline, of course.

Digging a little deeper, we can assign this variable to a more… suitably accessible medium by using the following (assuming that the variable type is String for this example, use the typecast that you need in a situation):

var myNewVariable:String = (root as MovieClip).myVariable;

Again, replace “myVariable” (and variations therein) with your own names.

Hope that this helps someone!

Cheers,

~/A\V/