Very basic question about Classes

[RansomHostage]

Hello,

Yesterday I began to study Actionscript 3 for the first time. I did a lot of reading and I think I understand the main principals behind it. What's confusing me is actually how to put it into practise.

I have testpage.fla and buttonWork.as. On the stage of testpage.fla I've placed a movieclip (it's not been Linked in any kind of way) and given it the instance name "theButton". There are ten frames on the timeline, with the tenth frame being labelled "success" and the first containing the following code:

theButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, buttonWork);
stop();

Inside buttonWork.as is:

package {
	import flash.display.*;
	import flash.events.*;

	public class buttonWork extends MovieClip {
		public function buttonWork() {
			gotoAndStop("success");
		}
	}
}

This gives me the following error:
1067: Implicit coercion of a value of type Class to an unrelated type Function.

I don't really understand what that means.

What I would like someone to tell me is if I've actually grasped the concept of how using external .as files should be done. Should the EventListener be placed in the external .as file instead of the timeline? Should the MC be Linked? Does "gotoAndStop" cause a problem being written the way I've done it?

Could somebody please answer these questions and also rearrange my code so I can see the exact correct way of doing things? As I mentioned, I'm completely new to this so being shown the precise way to go about this would be perfect.

Thank you very much!

[Ralgoth]

eventListeners need to have a function as the second parameter. buttonWork is not a function, it's a class...

public class buttonWork extends MovieClip {

If you're working in the timeline, it will be easiest to keep all your code there.

theButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, buttonClick);

stop();

function buttonClick(e:MouseEvent) {
	gotoAndStop("success");
}

[Ralgoth]

sorry, I only half read your post (my fault, obviously)

Here is how you would do it in your Class file

package {
	import flash.display.*;
	import flash.events.*;

	public class buttonWork extends MovieClip {
		public function buttonWork()
		{
			theButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickEvent);
		}
		
		private function clickEvent(e:MouseEvent):void
		{
			gotoAndStop('success');
		}
	}
}

[RansomHostage]

Thanks for the response, Ralgoth! I think I understand how to use functions better now.

Sadly, the code doesn't work. Clicking on the button does nothing (I replaced the gotoAndStop with a trace and it doesn't show when clicked). Is it because the MC is not Linked in any way? Or do I need some code on the main timeline to import the buttonWorks class?

Edit: I hadn't set the Document Class. Thanks again for your help!

[5TonsOfFlax]

Ralgoth's first code requires no external .as file, it is all timeline code.

Ralgoth's second code is all external .as file. The only thing it requires is that you set the "Document Class" of your fla to buttonWork.

[cancerinform]

Ralgoth's first code requires no external .as file, it is all timeline code.

Ralgoth's second code is all external .as file. The only thing it requires is that you set the "Document Class" of your fla to buttonWork.

...and add
public var theButton:MovieClip (if it is a MovieClip).

[RansomHostage]

Thanks for the help everyone, my understanding has improved now