as3: how to use grandchildren? ex. getChildByName("name").getChildByName("name2")

Question

I'm looking for a method, to get dynamically created children of a display object instance in as3 ?

trace(_view.getChildByName("name")) //returns name of display object (success)

trace(_view.getChildByName("name").getChildByName("name2")) //returns error 1061

Answer 1

Yes, you can. The problem is that DisplayObjectContainer.getChildByName() returns type DisplayObject, and an arbitrary display object may or may not be a DisplayObjectContainer. So, while you can do that, you first need to cast the type of the result to a DisplayObjectContainer:

public static function getGrandChildByName(
         parent : DisplayObjectContainer,
         child : String,
         grandchild : String
) : DisplayObject {
    var child_obj : DisplayObject = parent.getChildByName(child);
    var child_container : DisplayObjectContainer = child_obj as DisplayObjectContainer;
    return child_container.getChildByName(grandchild);
}

Note that in the example I gave above, I didn't do any checking to verify that the child is actually exists and is a DisplayObjectContainer.... in actual production code, you might want to add such checks.

Also, one last note, if you are using type MovieClip, you can simply refer to the object by its name:

  myclip.mc_child.mc_grandchild.gotoAndStop(3);

Simply refering to the elements by name is simpler and less error-prone. I highly recommend it.