Question

I want to know if there are any disadvantages/ drawbacks of using value objects in initializing an object, for example:

public class MonsterVO
{
    public var tenticles : Boolean;
    public var growl : GrowlType;
    public var damage : int;
    public var health : int;

}

public class Monster
{
    private var tenticles : Boolean;
    private var growl : GrowlType;
    private var damage : int;
    private var health : int;

    public function Monster(monsterData : MonsterVO)
    {
        tenticles = monsterData.tenticles;
        growl = monsterData.growl.clone();
        damage = monsterData.damage;
        health = monsterData.health;
    }
}

Answer 1

If you plan to use and initialize your Monster domain object the only way (from DTO MonsterVO) — there is no problem. But how you can be sure if there won’t any other usages in the future? You can’t overload constructor in ActionScript (like in Java). What if you’ll need to create a clone? You’ll have to create some fake MonsterVO for that 🙁

I think it is better to create some Factory Method to solve your problem.