Question

I have a checkbox in a component:

<s:CheckBox id="myCB_1" />

In my main.mxml I need to test for the state of the checkbox. I originally had all my code in main.mxml, but it was getting really long, and I thought that it was better practice to break my code into components. Also, I have other projects where the same concept will apply, so I really want to figure this out.

I have the following function :

private function checkAlarms(currentTime:Date):void
{
    if (!breakfastAlarmSounded)
    {
        if ((currentTime.hours > breakfastTime.hours) || ((currentTime.hours == breakfastTime.hours) && (currentTime.minutes >= breakfastTime.minutes)))
        {
            if (myCB_1.selected)
            {
                playBreakfastAudioAlarm();
            }
            if (myCB_2.selected)
            {
                playBreakfastVisualAlarm();
            }

            breakfastAlarmSounded = true;
        }
    }
...

simply addressing the component, as in:

myComponent.myCB_1.selected

doesn’t work. Someone mentioned that I need to create a variable in my component that refers to the id (myCB_1) of checkbox, but I don’t really understand or know how to do that, and they didn’t elaborate.

How do I test for the status of the CheckBox “myCB_1” in the component from within my main.mxml?

many thanks,

Mark

(newbie)

Answer 1

With very little information, I’m going to suspect you originally had the CheckBox included in main.mxml and moved it to a custom component. If so, you need to address the CheckBox’s ID via the custom component’s ID. Something like this (from main.mxml):

if(yourComponentsID.myCB_1.selected)
{
    ...
}

If this isn’t the case, please edit your post and give us more detail.

---

EDIT

You said you created a new custom component and moved the CheckBox into it. Great, that’s a helpful start 🙂 When you included your new component in your main.mxml file, it should look something like this:

<component:YourNewComponent />

Of course, however you named it (and whichever namespace is used to reference it) will be different from my example, but the principle should still apply. In main.mxml, you need to give your custom component a unique ID string so you can reference it within main:

<component:YourNewComponent id="myComponent" />

From here on, you should be able to reference the component, and any public elements within it: myComponent.myCB_1.