Recipe 2.8. Dispatching Events

Problem

You want to dispatch events.

Solution

Extend flash.events.EventDispatcher and call the dispatchEvent( ) method.

Discussion

Events are an important way for objects to communicate. They are essential for creating flexible systems. Flash Player 9, for example, has a built-in event dispatching mechanism in the flash.events.EventDispatcher class. All classes that dispatch events inherit from EventDispatcher (e.g., NetStream and Sprite). If you want to define a class that dispatches events, you can extend EventDispatcher, as follows:

package {
    import flash.events.EventDispatcher;
    public class Example extends EventDispatcher {

    }
}

The EventDispatcher class has public methods called addEventListener( ) and removeEventListener( ) that you can call from any instance of an EventDispatcher subclass to register event listeners. EventDispatcher also defines a protected method called dispatchEvent( ), which you can call from within a subclass to dispatch an event. The dispatchEvent( ) method requires at least one parameter as a flash.events.Event object or a subclass of Event.