Question

I am trying to create an ActionScript 3 class that implements two interfaces. The interfaces contain member functions with different signatures but the same name:

public interface IFoo
{
    function doStuff(input:int):void;
}

public interface IBar
{
    function doStuff(input1:String, input2:Number):void;
}

public class FooBar implements IFoo, IBar
{
    // ???
}

In C# (for example) this is not a problem because methods can be overloaded, but ActionScript does not support overloading. Is there any way to create a class that implements both interfaces?

Answer 1

No, unfortunately this is not possible and it’s because of the reason you already pointed out: ActionScript 3 does not support member overloading. It’s a shame, but it’s the unfortunate truth.

It is possible to have multiple members with the same name and even the same signature in a class, however, they must be qualified by namespace in that case. For instance, this should work:

public namespace foo;
public namespace bar;

foo function doStuf(input:int):void
{
    // ...
}

bar function doStuff(input1:String, input2:String):void
{
    // ...
}

You then reference the methods by qualifying them like so:

foo::doStuff(1);
bar::doStuff("foo", "bar");

Unfortunately, this won’t help with your problem because even though the namespaces may be in the public namespace, they are still not the same as the public namespace itself meaning you’re not satisfying the contract set forth by the interfaces (everything must be public). Making a long story short; unless you use some sort of composite pattern, you’re out of luck until Adobe decides to implement member overloading.