Question

I am using flash.utils.getDefinitionByName in an attempt to grab an art asset. I use this function quite a bit and haven’t had trouble until now. Check it:

assetName = Assets.MegaBerry; // works
assetName = getDefinitionByName("Assets.MegaBerry") as Class; // doesn't work

What the heck?? Error response for the second line is “Variable not found.“

If it matters: Assets is a file in my root source directory (it has no package; Assets is the fully qualified name) and I’ve tried putting:

import Assets;

at the top with no luck.

For reference, in Assets.as I have:

    [Embed(source = "../art/Inventory/MegaBerry.png")]
    public static var MegaBerry:Class;

Answer 1

Your problem is that embedding the resource into the Assets class will create a static variable of type Class that belongs to that class – which is what you are referencing when you use Assets.MegaBerry: A variable(!) of type Class.

It does not, however, register the MegaBerry class to a fully qualified class name. To do this, you have to use – who would have guessed it – registerClassAlias at some point in your application:

registerClassAlias("Assets.MegaBerry", Assets.MegaBerry);

After that, it will be available everywhere else when calling getDefinitionByName.

** EDIT **

Well that’s some unexpected behavior… It turns out, the class that was embedded is in fact automatically registered, but under {className}_{variableName}, instead of the notation you would expect. So using:

getDefinitionByName("Assets_MegaBerry") as Class;

should to the trick.

registerClassAlias also works, but then you need to call getClassByAliasinstead of getDefinitionByName. Sorry for the mix-up.

** END EDIT **

You can also use the Embed tag to inject the resource into a separate class file, which you can then reference as expected by using getDefinitionByName, or simply using an import:

package assets {

    [Embed(source="../art/Inventory/MegaBerry.png"]
    public class MegaBerry extends BitmapData {
    }
}