Question

I am trying to have a more dynamic function and would like to allow the functions instance name were it outputs the text to be changeable.

for example

function example_function(url,instance_name){
      instance_name.text = url;
}

example_function('www.example.com','url_txt');
example_function('www.another.com','more_txt');

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Yes, just parse the string into square brackets next to the instance’s owner. For example:

this[instance_name].text = url;

More info:

Take this object:

var obj:Object = {
    property1: 10,
    property2: "hello"
};

Its properties can be accessed either as you’d expect:

obj.property1;
obj.property2;

Or as mentioned above:

obj["property1"];
obj["property2"];

I suggest using a function like this one I’ve created to tighten your code up a bit:

function selectProperty(owner:*, property:String):*
{
    if(owner.hasOwnProperty(property)) return owner[property];
    else throw new Error(owner + " does not have a property \"" + property + "\".");

    return null;
}

trace(selectProperty(stage, "x")); // 0
trace(selectProperty(stage, "test")); // error