Question

I have two classes, call them A and B. They both contain a Loader object. In class A I load content into the Loader object.

public class A {
    var loader:Loader;

    public function A():void {
        loader = new Loader();
        this.addChild(loader);
        loader.load(...);
    }
}

public class B() {
    var loader:Loader;

    public function B():void {
        loader = new Loader(); 
        this.addChild(loader);
    }
}

I need to now assign A’s Loader to B’s Loader (after the load is complete).

In some other class I have an instance of A and B. Doing a direct assignment of the loader values doesn’t seem to work (when showing B, A’s loader content is not displayed).

var b:B = new B();
var a:A = new A();

// ... I wait for a's loader to be loaded ...
// ... then ... 
b.loader = a.loader;
addChild(b);
// A's Loader is not shown ...

If I do the following, it works:

b.addChild(a.loader);

But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to manage a bunch of children when I know I only have one child but just want to change its content.

Is there a way to copy/assign a Loader directly? I tried assigning to ‘content’ but that’s read-only. Is there another way I can do this? Basically I have an array of Loader objects that all get loaded with images. I then have a single Loader that’s on the stage and I want to assign to it images (Loaders) from my array.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I ended up swapping the children to get the same effect. It’s less complicated than I thought it would be.

So basically in B I did:

this.setChildIndex(loader,0);

This is to make sure the loader is at index 0. (It can be any fixed index but in my case I needed it to appear at the bottom). It’s not necessary to have a loader in B initially but I just put it there to make sure there’s something fixed at index 0 (so I don’t accidentally remove some other child).

Then when setting A’s loader to B I’d just swap out the child at index 0.

b.removeChildAt(0);  
b.addChildAt(a.loader,0);

It’s not exactly the solution I wanted but it’s working well so far.