Macromedia flex 2 Manual

98

Creating Advanced MXML Components

You can also define events to be dispatched when a property changes. This enables you to 
signal the change so that an event listener can recognize the change. For more information on 
events, see 

. 

You can call a component’s custom methods and access its properties in ActionScript just as 
you would any instance method or component property, as the following application shows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- mxmlAdvanced/MainPropSetGet.mxml -->
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" 
    xmlns:MyComp="myComponents.*">

    <MyComp:StateComboBoxSetGet id="myStateCB" shortNames="true"/>
    <mx:Button click="myStateCB.shortNames=!myStateCB.shortNames;"/>
            
</mx:Application>

In this example, selecting the button toggles the display format of the state name between the 
short and long formats.

Defining inspectable properties

You should precede the variable or set function with the 

[Inspectable]

 metadata tag if you 

plan to use the component in an authoring tool such as Adobe Flex Builder. The 

[Inspectable]

 metadata tag must immediately precede the property’s variable declaration or 

the setter and getter methods to be bound to that property, as the following example shows:

<mx:Script>

<![CDATA[

// Define public variables.
[Inspectable(defaultValue=true)]
public var shortNames:Boolean = true;

]]>

</mx:Script>

For more information on the 

[Inspectable]

 metadata tag, see 

.