Improving MovieClipProxy.as?

This is the fifth post in a series.  I made a couple of  "improvements" to MovieClipProxy.as and found out a thing or two before abandoning the idea due to our sloppy coding practices that would require more fixing than I was prepared to do.

I was also happy to receive a reply from Senocular indicating that there was not a simpler way just to override the _visible setter.  He wrote:

AS3 supports native implementation overrides for getter/setters, but not AS1/AS2

In the last post, I left off wondering whether I was willing to write a getter/setter for all the properties, methods and functions of my ubPod class.

I wrote two functions for MovieClipProxy.as to add additional properties and functions to a MovieClipProxy instance, namely addProp and addFunction:

public function addProp(propName:String){
 var getterFunction:Function = function(){
  return this._mc[arguments.callee.name];
 }
 getterFunction.name = propName;
 var setterFunction:Function = function(newVal):Void{
  this._mc[arguments.callee.name] = newVal;
 }
 setterFunction.name = propName;

 this.addProperty(propName, getterFunction, setterFunction);
}
public function addFunction(propName:String){
 this[propName] = function(a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j){
  return this._mc[arguments.callee.name].call(arguments.callee.mcp_instance, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j);
 }
 this[propName].name = propName;
 this[propName].mcp_instance = this._mc;

 //no luck getting getters and setters to work for functions
    /*
 var getterFunction:Function = function(){
  trace("in mcp getter function with name "+arguments.callee["name"]+" from "+arguments.callee);
  trace("addFunction getter");
  return this._mc[arguments.callee.name];
 }
 getterFunction.name = propName;
 var setterFunction:Function = function(f:Function){
  trace("in mcp setter function with name "+arguments.callee["name"]+" from "+arguments.callee);
  trace("addFunction setter");
  //this._mc[arguments.callee.name] = newVal;
  this._mc[arguments.callee.name] = function(a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j){return f.call(arguments.callee.mcp_instance, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j)};
 }
 setterFunction.name = propName;
 setterFunction.mcp_instance = this._mc;

 this.addProperty(propName, getterFunction, setterFunction);
 */
}

which are invoked pretty simply with code like:

mcp.addProp("side");
mcp.addFunction("scale");

Next, I wondered if there was a way to get my ubPod class to reveal more of its properties and methods in a for..in loop. The new learning here relates to ASSetPropFlags (of which the compiler is unaware) which allowed me to write a function like:

_global["ASSetPropFlags"](ubPod.prototype,null,6,true);

for (var i in ubPod.prototype){    
    var thing = ubPod.prototype[i];
    var typeThing:String = typeof(thing)
    if (typeThing == "function" && i != "__constructor__"){
        mcp.addFunction(i);
    } else if (typeThing == 'number' || typeThing == 'string' || typeThing == 'boolean' || (typeThing == 'object' && i != "__proto__")){
        mcp.addProp(i);
    } else {
        trace("did nothing for "+i);
    }
}

Maybe some of this will help folks still in AS2 land.  I am left still pretty foggy about __proto__, prototype, extends and casting.

Here are two challenges:

1. Find the error in the code shared in the previous post.
2. Modify my addFunction method to allow for a getter and setter as well as a function definition to be established.

Actionscript 2: Catching when an instance of a Class that extends MovieClip is made visible

You just don't get blog post titles as precise as that every day!

I have been telling a story today about trying to catch when a movieclip's _visible property is set.  First, I showed how we create classes that extend MovieClip.  Next, I described the problems that I am having writing a set and get function for _visible.  Third, I showed how MovieClipProxy could be used on a simple MovieClip to catch the setting of _visible.  Now, I am going to finish the story and show how it can be done for a class like ubSquare.

The first step is to make a slight adjustment to MovieClipProxy.   Its constructor is written to either take 3 parameters and create an empty MovieClip or 4 parameters and attach a movieclip from the library.  I changed it so that if it is sent more, it will use the first parameter to create the movieclip.

In the first post's example, we created the ubSquare using:

this.mySquare_ubS = ubSquare.create(this, "mySquare_mc", {_x:50, _y:75, _side:10});

So if we change the constructor of MovieClipProxy to read:

 function MovieClipProxy(a,b,c,d,e) {
  var mc, mc2;
  if (arguments.length == 3) {
   mc = __initEmpty(a,b,c);
  } else if (arguments.length == 4){
   mc = __initAttached(a,b,c,d);
  } else {
   mc = a(b,c,d,e);
  }
  __applyPrototyped(mc);
 }

Then we can invoke it with:

 var mcp:MovieClipProxy = new MovieClipProxy(ubSquare.create, container, instanceName, initObj, depth);

and the created MovieClip will now be a ubSquare.

But, ubSquare had a side property and a scale method that are not handled by MovieClipProxy.  I can create a ubSquareProxy Class

import edu.clips.test.MovieClipProxy;
import edu.clips.test.ubSquare;

class edu.clips.test.ubSquareProxy extends MovieClipProxy {
 
 public static function create(container:MovieClip, instanceName:String,
         initObj:Object, depth:Number) {
  if (depth == undefined) depth = container.getNextHighestDepth();
  var mcp:MovieClipProxy = new MovieClipProxy(ubSquare.create, container, instanceName, initObj, depth);

  //define all the ubSquare properties, methods and functions
  mcp["scale"] = function(newScale:Number){
   trace("in ubSquareProxy.scale "+ mcp._mc);
   mcp._mc.scale(newScale);
  }
  mcp.addProperty("side", 
      function(){trace("addProperty getter");return this._mc.side}, 
      function(newSide){trace("addProperty setter");this._mc.side = newSide});
  return mcp;
 }
}

and create it using:

this.mySquare_ubS = ubSquareProxy.create(this, "mySquare_mc", {_x:50, _y:75, _side:10});

Now the questions that I am left with are these:

1. Is it worth the time to apply this method to my ubPod class with 80 documented properties, 23 methods and 7 event handlers just to capture when the one MovieClip property, _visible, changes?
2. Is there a way to use __proto__ or prototype or constructor to access the MovieClip's setter for _visible and just change that to broadcast an event?
3. Should ubSquareProxy extend MovieClipProxy, MovieClip or nothing?