Question

So I am writing a program which uses Dictionary to store objects. For example

var dictionary:Dictionary=new Dictionary();
var myObject = new myObject(var1, var2, var3);

dicionary["key"]=myObject;

where var1, var2, and var3 are simply means of assigning values to variables in myObject.

my question is, can I access values or functions that are found in myObject? In myObject class I have some getters and setters. Can I use a getter to get the value of var1 for example.

dictionary["keys"].getVar1()?

kind of thing.

Answer 1

Sure, just as

var obj:MyObject = dicionary["key"];
trace( obj.getVar1() );

works, you can do it without the variable, in a single line.

trace( dicionary["key"].getVar1() );

Just beware of the type, you will get errors if

• the key doesn’t exist
• the value for the key is null
• the value for the key is of another type

So it might be a good idea to check for these things before accessing any methods directly.

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However, if you are using Strings, a common Object is the usual solution. It works as an associative array:

var dictObj:Object = [];
dictObj["key"] = myObject;

The Dictionary on the other hand is used when you need non-string objects as keys.

var dictionary:Dictionary= new Dictionary();
var key:MyKeyObject = new MyKeyObject();
dictionary[key] = myObject;

One last note: class names are usually written in CamelCase