Macromedia flex 2 Manual

Adding custom properties and methods to a component

You might use this new method with the

click

event of a

Button

control to change the

display from long names to short names, as the following example shows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
xmlns:MyComp="myComponents.*">

<MyComp:StateComboBoxPropMethod id="myCB" shortNames="false"/>
<mx:Button label="Use Short Names" click="myCB.setShortName(true);"/>

</mx:Application>

Defining properties in MXML

In MXML, you can use an MXML tag to define a property of any type, as long as the type
refers to an ActionScript class name. For example, you can use the

<mx:String>

<mx:Number>

, and

<mx:Boolean>

tags to define properties in your MXML components that

take String, Number, or Boolean values, respectively. When using one of these tags, you must
specify an

, which becomes the property name.

Optionally, you can specify an initial value in the body of the tag, or you can use the

source

property to specify the contents of an external URL or file as the initial property value. If you
use the

source

property, the body of the tag must be empty. The initial value can be static

data or a binding expression.

The following examples show initial properties set as static data and binding expressions;
values are set in the tag bodies and in the

source

properties:


<mx:Boolean id="myBooleanProperty">true</mx:Boolean>
<mx:Boolean id="passwordStatus">{passwordExpired}</mx:Boolean>


<mx:Number id="myNumberProperty">15</mx:Number>
<mx:Number id="minutes">{numHours * 60}</mx:Number>


<mx:String id="myStringProperty">Welcome, {CustomerName}.</mx:String>
<mx:String id="myStringProperty1" source="./file"/>

All properties defined by using the

<mx:String>

<mx:Number>

, and

<mx:Boolean>

tags are

public. This means that the component user can access these properties.