Question

I’m having some trouble solving a race condition that exists when I instantiate new MovieClip classes with some custom events that fire back before I can store the instances in an associative object.

Main Class

var pages:Object = {
    "page1":"page1",
    "page2":"page2"
};

for(var pageName:String in pages)
{
    pages[pageName] = buildPage(pageName, onReady);
}

function buildPage(pageName:String, onReady:Function)
{
    var newPage:MovieClip = new (getDefinitionByName(pageClass) as Class)();
    newPage.addEventListener("PAGE_READY", onReady);
    newPage.dispatchEvent(new Event("PAGE_CREATE"));
    return newPage;
}

function onReady(e:Event)
{
    for(var pageName:String in pages)
    {
        trace(typeof pages[pageName]);
    }
}

Page 1 & 2 Classes extends MovieClip

function pageX()
{
    this.addEventListener("PAGE_CREATE",this.onCreate);
}

function onCreate(e:Event)
{
    this.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000);
    this.graphics.drawRect(0,0,200x200);
    this.graphics.endFill();

    this.dispatchEvent(new Event("PAGE_READY"));
}

Unfortunatley when this all fires off I get:

string
string
object
string

The original string object still exists before I can store the MovieClip instance for later reference. Any suggestions on how to beat this?

Answer 1

The code you posted does not depict a standard class.
Is this code on the movieclip frames or in separate files?
But as far as posted code I can see your issue is with the PAGE_CREATE event firing before the object has been added to the array.
your are doing

newPage.dispatchEvent(new Event("PAGE_CREATE"));

before you return the object.
You did not post the full classes so I really can’t help you rewrite your code but, from what you posted I would remove the buildPage method completely and put the code in loop then dispatch the event after the object has been added to the array.
Also, another reason, best practice would be not to call a function from a loopif that function does not have a lot of code in it.

for(var pageName:String in pages)
{
    var newPage:MovieClip = new (getDefinitionByName(pageClass) as Class)();
    newPage.addEventListener("PAGE_READY", onReady);
    pages[pageName] = newPage;
    newPage.dispatchEvent(new Event("PAGE_CREATE"));
}