Flex: can't access property of custom event

[Danielle R]

Hi all,

It's me again I've changed my strategy for this problem: http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...09#post4305709
I now want to try to update my component using a custom event. So the main problem still is: in my application I load 1 data file in the main mxml. After it loads some processing is done on it and the data is stored in an ArrayCollection. This collection holds data for three years. I want to visualise this year data by letting users click on a button labelled with that year. I call an eventhandler in the main mxml file that updates a variable named currentYear and passes this value on to a variable called year (in my new approach using a custom event, view code below) in an ItemRenderer which should then display the data from this specific year.
Now I dispatch a custom event in the main mxml like this when a button of a certain year is clicked:

protected function btn01ClickHandler(event:MouseEvent):void{
                currentYear = "2001";
                var myEvent:ChangeYearEvent = new ChangeYearEvent(currentYear);
                this.dispatchEvent(myEvent);
            } 

The custom event that passes on the selected year value is called ChangeYearEvent looks like this (pretty basic):

package events
{
    import flash.events.Event;
    
    public class ChangeYearEvent extends Event
    {
        public var year:String;
        public static const CHANGE_YEAR:String = "change_year";
        
        public function ChangeYearEvent(year:String)
        {
            super(type);
            this.year = year;
        }
        
        override public function clone():Event {
            return new ChangeYearEvent(year);
        }
    }
} 

In my ItemRenderer which has to work with the data from a specific year I try to access the data like this:

<s:ItemRenderer xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 
                xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" 
                xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx" 
                autoDrawBackground="true" creationComplete="init()">
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
private function init():void{
                systemManager.addEventListener(ChangeYearEvent.CHANGE_YEAR, setYear, true);
}
private function setYear(evt:Event){

                trace("year:"+evt.year);
// and some other stuff, this is just to show the approach
            }
</s:ItemRenderer> 

The problem is that evt.year isn't found: access to an undefined property... Why? What am I missing here? The event is coming in but I can't access the property of the event. Any help is greatly appreciated. TIA.

[jAQUAN]

your function signature is expecting an Event object but .year is a property of ChangeYearEvent.
just change the parameter

private function setYear(evt:ChangeYearEvent):void{ 
  trace("year:"+evt.year); 
  // and some other stuff, this is just to show the approach 
}

[Danielle R]

Hi JAQAUN,
Thanks for that, of course that's it. I did also have to add metadata to the ItemRenderer like this:

<fx:Metadata>
        [Event(name="change_year", type="events.ChangeYearEvent")]
    </fx:Metadata> 

To actually be able to read the data passed with the event. Now it works. Thanks again for all the help.