Question

I am running a loop to pull thumbs into a containing movieclip from an xml list. What I want to do is have the thumb’s parent movieclip fade in after they are done loading, but I can’t figure out how to reference the parent once it’s loaded.

My code(which currently doesn’t work the way I want it):

var vsThumb:articleBox;
var currentarticleX:Number = 0;
var articleLinkURL:String;
var articleImageURL:String;
var articleText:String;
var vsThumbLoader:Loader;
var next_x:Number;
next_x = 9;
var thumbAlphaTween:Tween;
var articlevsThumb:Array = new Array();

function loadarticleHeadlines():void
{
    for (var i:int = 0; i < egarticleXml.articlelist.articleitem.length(); i++)
    {
        vsThumb = new articleBox();
        vsThumb.alpha = 0;
        vsThumbLoader = new Loader();
        vsThumbLoader.load(new URLRequest(egarticleXml.articlelist.articleitem[i].articlethumbnail));
        articleListContainter.addChild(vsThumb);
        vsThumb.articleImage.addChild(vsThumbLoader);
        vsThumb.articleTitle.text = egarticleXml.articlelist.articleitem[i].articletitle;
        titleAutosize(vsThumb.articleTitle);
        vsThumb.x = next_x;
        next_x += 260;
        articlevsThumb[i] = vsThumb;
        vsThumbLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, showBox);
        vsThumb.clickBtn.buttonMode = true;
    }
    function showBox(event:Event):void 
    {
        thumbAlphaTween = new Tween(articlevsThumb[i],"alpha",None.easeNone,0,1,.25,true);
    }
}

So how do I refer back to the loader’s parent so I can fade in the whole movieclip? Can I pass a variable into the showBox function?

Answer 1

1. Don’t use nested functions. They tend to make things more complicated.
2. i will always have the end value (articleitem.length()-1) in all of the event handlers you create, because its scope is the outer function, loadarticleHeadlines (it will increase by 1 on every iteration). That’s probably why your code doesn’t work.

3. The event will be fired on the loaderInfo of your loader, so you can find the loader’s parent by using event.target.loader.parent:

   function loadarticleHeadlines() : void
   {
       for (var i:int = 0; i < egarticleXml.articlelist.articleitem.length(); i++)
       {
           vsThumb = new articleBox();
           vsThumb.alpha = 0;
           vsThumbLoader = new Loader();
           vsThumbLoader.load(new URLRequest(egarticleXml.articlelist.articleitem[i].articlethumbnail));
           articleListContainter.addChild(vsThumb);
           vsThumb.articleImage.addChild(vsThumbLoader);
           vsThumb.articleTitle.text = egarticleXml.articlelist.articleitem[i].articletitle;
           titleAutosize(vsThumb.articleTitle);
           vsThumb.x = next_x;
           next_x += 260;
           articlevsThumb[i] = vsThumb;
           vsThumbLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, showBox);
           vsThumb.clickBtn.buttonMode = true;
       }
   }
   
   
   function showBox(event:Event):void 
   {
       thumbAlphaTween = new Tween(event.target.loader.parent,"alpha",None.easeNone,0,1,.25,true);
   }