Question

I’m working on a game where users can win buttons/badges as awards. I estimate there will be around 500 awards, in all.

I want to allow the users to sell their duplicate/unwanted badges to the bank and buy new ones from the bank.

I am showing the badges in multiple awards frames. Below the badges, I show the count, along with a “Buy” and “Sell” button.

My question is: What’s the best way to handle SO MANY buy & sell buttons? Is there a way around coding 1000 eventListeners and 1000 eventHandlers?

One possible solution is to name my buttons, incrementally, like “buy_mc1”, “buy_mc2”, etc. Then do a loop to create listeners for this[“buy_mc” + i]. However, I would then have to make VERY sure that I link these back correctly to the awards.

Currently, I have an “award_mc” field in my database, which stores the name of the movieclip in my .fla. From that, I can access related assets, like the count field, like: this[db.award_mc + “_count”].txt.

Unfortunately, this method does not lend itself well to looped access.

Maybe I can create an array of movieclip names that are in synch with the buy/sell buttons. For example:

myArray = {aMissionAward, anotherAward, ubernessAward};

My buttons would be:
buy_0, buy_1, buy_2, etc.

When someone clicks a button, I can link buy_2 to “ubernessAward”, then look for “ubernessAward” on the database.

How can I get the number from the button, though? Even if I can loop through setting up the eventListeners, will I have to set up individuatl eventHandlers to process the correct index number?

I’m open to suggestions on another way to do this.

————————– EDIT —————————-

Here’s my solution. Props to Jens Struwe for pointing me in the right direction.

I was not able to get this to work with buttons on the stage. Apparently, buttons are a static class. MovieClips are dynamic, so I was able to get this to work by using MovieClips. Here’s what I did:

Added 3 MovieClips to the stage.
Named them “mc0”, “mc1”, and “mc2”.

Add this AS3 code:

for (var i:Number=0; i<3; i++)
{
    this["mc" + i].addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, onMcClick );
    this["mc" + i].awardKey = i;
}

function onMcClick( evt:MouseEvent ):void
{
    trace("MC ID = " +(evt.target).awardKey);

    switch ((evt.target).awardKey)
    {
        case 0:
            trace("     Do stuff for 0");
            break;
        case 1:
            trace("     Do stuff for 1");
            break;
        case 2:
            trace("     Do stuff for 2");
            break;      
    }
}

From here, I can tie the awardKey to an array of MovieClip names. Then, I can use the MovieClip names to read my database.

This is why I come to Stack Overflow, FIRST, when I have a problem. 🙂

Answer 1

You need only one listener that can handle all of your buttons:

1. Let your buy and sell button click events bubble.

2. Give each button a unique identifier such as myButton.awardKey = "uberness";

3. Register a single event listener to the container of all of your buttons.

4. Determine the actual button clicked using event.target and the type of award using MyButton(event.target).awardKey.