Question

Let’s say that I have a class Foo:

public class Foo {     public static var bar:String = 'test';  } 

How can I reference bar at runtime using the string ‘Foo’ or/and and instance of Foo and the string ‘bar’?

I.e.

var x:Object = new Foo(); ... x['bar'] 

…doesn’t work, debug mode in IntelliJ got my hopesup as bar gets listed as a property.

Update:

Note that at the ‘point of action’ I don’t know anything about foo in compile time. I need to resolve Foo.bar through the strings ‘Foo’ and ‘bar’.

Of put differently, as flex don’t have eval how can I accomplishe the same as eval(‘Foo.bar’)?

Answer 1

It’s a static variable, so you won’t be able to access it using an instance of foo; it’s accessed statically, using ClassName.variableName notation, like so:

trace(Foo.bar);

// yields: ‘test’

As well, because you’ve declared both Foo and bar public, you should be able to access Foo.bar that way from anywhere in your application.

---

Update: Ah, I see what you’re asking. You can use flash.utils.Summary.getDefinitionByName():

// Either this way trace(getDefinitionByName('Foo').bar);  // Or this trace(getDefinitionByName('Foo')['bar']); 

… the latter thanks to Jeremy’s answer, which was new to me. 🙂