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Flash Reference Guide

Aug 22, 2003

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There are several ways you can use arrays in your work. For example, you can use them to store lists of objects, such as a bunch of returned items. If you load data from remote web servers, you might even receive data as an array of nested objects.

Often, arrays contain data in a similar format. If you build an audio application in Flash, for example, you might have a user’s playlist stored as an array of song information, stored in objects. Each object would contain the song name, artist name, song duration, sound file location, or any other information that you might need to associate with a particular file.

The index is the location of an item in an array. All arrays are zero-based, which means that the first element in the array is [0], the second element is [1], and so on.

There are three different kinds of arrays: indexed arrays, multidimensional arrays, and associative arrays.

Creating Indexed Arrays

Indexed arrays store a series of one or more values. You can look up items by their position in the array, which you might have done in earlier sections. The first index is always the number 0, and the index increments by one for each subsequent element that you add to the array.

You can create an indexed array by calling the Array class constructor or by initializing the array with an array literal. You create arrays using the Array constructor and an array literal in the next example.

First, create a new Flash document, and save it as indexArray.fla. Next, add the following ActionScript to Frame 1 of the timeline:

var myArray:Array = new Array();
myArray.push("one");
myArray.push("two");
myArray.push("three");
trace(myArray); // one,two,three

In the first line of ActionScript, you define a new array to hold the values.

Select Control > Test Movie to test your code. The following text is displayed in the Output panel:

one,two,three

Return to the authoring tool, and delete the code in the Actions panel. Add the following ActionScript to Frame 1 of the Timeline:

var myArray:Array = ["one", "two", "three"];
trace(myArray); // one,two,three

In this code, you use the array literal to define a new array for your code. When you test the code, you’ll see the same output appear in the Output panel.

Creating Multidimensional Arrays

In ActionScript, you can implement arrays as nested arrays that are essentially arrays of arrays. Nested arrays, also known as multidimensional arrays, are very similar to matrices or grids. When you’re programming, you might use multidimensional arrays to model these kinds of structures. A chess board, for example, is a grid of eight columns and rows; you could use the chess board as a model for an array that contains eight elements, each of which is also an array that contains eight elements.

Consider, for example, a list of tasks that is stored as an indexed array of strings:

var tasks:Array = ["wash dishes", "take out trash"];

If you want to store a separate list of tasks for each day of the week, you can create a multidimensional array with one element for each day of the week. Each element contains an indexed array that stores the list of tasks.

Create a new Flash document, and save it as multiArray1.fla. Add the following ActionScript to Frame 1 of the timeline:

var twoDArray:Array = new Array(new Array("one","two"), new Array("three", "four"));
trace(twoDArray);

This array, twoDArray, consists of two array elements. These elements are themselves arrays consisting of two elements. In this case, twoDArray is the main array that contains two nested arrays.

Add the following ActionScript at the end of your code on Frame 1 of the timeline:

trace(twoDArray[0][0]); // one
trace(twoDArray[1][1]); // four

To retrieve elements of a multidimensional array, you use multiple array access ([]) operators after the name of the top-level array. The first [] refers to the index of the top-level array. Subsequent array access operators refer to elements of nested arrays.

Creating Associative Arrays

An associative array, which is like an object, is made of unordered keys and values. Associative arrays use keys instead of a numeric index to organize stored values. Each key is a unique string, and it’s associated with and used to access one value. That value can be a data type such as Number, Array, Object, and so on. When you create code to find a value that’s associated with a key, you’re indexing or performing a lookup, which is the most typical reason for using an associative array.

When you use associative arrays, you can call the array element you need by using a string rather than a number, which is often easier to remember. The downside is that these arrays aren’t as useful in a loop because they don’t use numbers as the index value. They are useful, however, when you need to look up by key values frequently. For example, if you had an array of names and ages that you needed to refer to a lot, you might use an associative array.

The following example demonstrates how to create an object and define a series of properties in an associative array.

var someObj:Object = new Object();
// Define a series of properties.
someObj.myShape = "Rectangle";
someObj.myW = 480;
someObj.myH = 360;
someObj.myX = 100;
someObj.myY = 200;
someObj.myAlpha = 72;
someObj.myColor = 0xDFDFDF;
// Display a property using dot operator and array access syntax.
trace(someObj.myAlpha); // 72
trace(someObj["myAlpha"]); // 72

The first line of ActionScript defines a new object (someObj) that you use as the associative array. Following this, you define a series of properties in someObj. Finally, you display a property that you select using both dot operator and array access syntax.

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