In the previous chapter we discussed the steps involved in creating flex application. This lesson will discuss actionscript syntax. Actionscript was created by Adobe for their Flash IDE to control 2D animations in flash. The actionscript syntax is very similar to that of Javascript. So if you know Javascript 80% of actionscript you know most of actionscript’s syntax.

In this article I will go into the additional features that are supported by Actionscript.

Variable Declarations

Syntax:

var  variableName;

Sample:

var sample_var = 1;

Variable name rules: Name should not contain spaces, cannot be reserved actionscript keywords like if, for, do, while.

Strings

Strings are assigned to variables using a single quote or double quote.

var name = ‘raj’;
var anothername=”raj”;

Booleans

Booleans are assigned to either true or false. The words are lowercase and are reserved keywords.

var isAMonkey = true;

Strict Data Typing

Although variables are loosely typed it is possible to specify a type for your variables in Actionscript. This is also called variable type annotation. The following statement declares a variable of type Number. You can specify annotations for your own data type declarations also.

var mileage:Number=20;

var Ferrari:Car;

Functions

Functions are defined with the same syntax as Javascript. But actionscript supports specifying return type through type annotations similar to variable type annotations. Shown below are some sample declarations

function findInterest(principal,interest,time):number
{
…
}

Anonymous functions

An anonymous function is the same as normal functions but it is defined similar to declaring a variable.

var testFunction = function() {

doSomethin();

}

testFunction();

The difference is that anonymous functions should be fully defined before being executed but normal functions will get mapped to their definitions even if the definition falls after the part where the function is called.

Flow control and looping

Actionscript supports all the looping constructs that Javascript does:

While loops

while (expression)

{

//do something

}

For Loops

var y:Number=1;
for (var x:Number = 1; x <=5; x++)
{
     y=y*x;
}

Classes And Objects

Actionscript supports classes in a way similar to Javascript. Instead of relying on the function keyword to define functions, actionscript uses the following syntax:

Class Classname
{
   private var varName;
   public function funcName()
   {
   }

}

Here public and private are access specifiers. The first definition within the class is a class attribute. The second is a class method. Instantiating an object:

var newObj = new  ClassName();

If you are familiar with Java you will find actionscript’s syntax of defining classes very similar.

Packages

Packages are used to group related classes together.

package packageName
{

//class definitions

}

Static variables

Static variables are attributes that are defined as part of the class. These variables are not unique to each variable like instance variables. They are accessed by referencing the classname.

class ActionscriptBook
{
 public static pages:Number = 322;
}
var pages = ActionscriptBook.pages;

Getters and Setters

Actionscript supports creating getter and setter functions that control access to class variables.

class  Box {
private var side:Number;
public function get theSide():Number
 {
 return side;
 }
 public function set theSide(theNum:Number):Number
{
 side=theNum;
}
}

In this chapter we have learnt the basic actionscript syntax. In the next chapter, we will learn how to use the various components and how to place them within containers.

In the previous lesson we briefly discussed creating a flex application. In this lesson I will discuss how to create a flex application and walk you through the process of creating one.

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I’ve written a guest post at one of my favourite web development blogs – BuildInternet on how to create just that. The article discusses four methods to create equal height column layouts in HTML/CSS. I’m very excited about this article because this is my first guest post on another blog. I will be making many others like this. Please take a look:

Four Methods to Create Equal Height Columns