Question

is it possible to obtain the instance name of a class from the class without having to manually pass the instance name as a string parameter to the class constructor?

//Create New SizeClass
var big:SizeClass = new SizeClass();

//-------------

package
{
public class SizeClass
     {
     public function SizeClass()
          {
          trace( //-- Instance Name "big" --// );
          }
     }
}

Answer 1

No, it is not possible to know anything about the containing code block during a constructor, save what you can learn from the stack trace (though that’s not available except in the debugger version of Flash). Even if you had a global access point for the containing class, it still would not allow for that access.

Think of a constructor like a method call. In a line of AS, it will be called before the assignment. Eg: var a:Foo = new Foo() the Foo is created (the constructor completes), and then a is populated with whatever just happened. After that point a will remain agnostic of its context (because of encapsulation) unless it is told about it (this is even true on a DisplayObject — try this( var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); trace( mc.root ) //this will be null ).

---

I’m keeping this because it is useful albeit not useful to your original answer.

You can always get the name of a class with getQualifiedClassName from the flash.utils package. You can’t get a DisplayObject’s until well after it has been constructed, but you can simulate this by (I believe) overriding function set name( value:String ):void. If that doesn’t work, then try finding it after Event.ADDED and/or Event.ADDED_TO_SAGE.