Comments on: Hiding Properties in Flex Components http://blog.ashier.com/2008/03/25/hiding-properties-in-flex-components/ flash / flex / air development Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:55:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Sid Maskit http://blog.ashier.com/2008/03/25/hiding-properties-in-flex-components/#comment-925 Sid Maskit Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:42:04 +0000 http://blog.ashier.com/2008/03/25/hiding-properties-in-flex-components/#comment-925 Quick follow-up. It turns out that the Exclude metadata tag does even less than I thought it does. All it does is make it so the excluded property will not show up in the code hinting list. You can still use the property, even within the tag declaring that component that it is a property of. So, continuing the example from my previous comment, it will work just fine to do the following: <myNamespace:MyComponent id=”myComponent” btn.label=“modified” /> Quick follow-up. It turns out that the Exclude metadata tag does even less than I thought it does. All it does is make it so the excluded property will not show up in the code hinting list. You can still use the property, even within the tag declaring that component that it is a property of. So, continuing the example from my previous comment, it will work just fine to do the following:

<myNamespace:MyComponent id=”myComponent” btn.label=“modified” />

]]> By: Sid Maskit http://blog.ashier.com/2008/03/25/hiding-properties-in-flex-components/#comment-924 Sid Maskit Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:12:43 +0000 http://blog.ashier.com/2008/03/25/hiding-properties-in-flex-components/#comment-924 It is sort of true that "btn" won't be accessible outside that component, but there are limits on this. Let's say that your custom component is in the file MyComponent.mxml, and that we would therefore instantiate it within another file as follows: <myNamespace:MyComponent id="myComponent" /> If we try to use the btn attribute within that tag, it will not be available to us. However, we can still access the button subcomponent for things such as binding. Thus we can add another tag which would bind to the button subcomponent, like this: <mx:Text text="{myComponent.btn.label}" /> Not only would this not cause a compiler error, but it would work correctly. Further, we can access the subcomponent button using ActionScript, such as this: this.myComponent.btn.label = "modified"; And that will also work. Thus it turns out that the [Exclude] is limited to altering what attributes are available within the tag that declares a component. It is sort of true that “btn” won’t be accessible outside that component, but there are limits on this. Let’s say that your custom component is in the file MyComponent.mxml, and that we would therefore instantiate it within another file as follows:

<myNamespace:MyComponent id=”myComponent” />

If we try to use the btn attribute within that tag, it will not be available to us. However, we can still access the button subcomponent for things such as binding. Thus we can add another tag which would bind to the button subcomponent, like this:

<mx:Text text=”{myComponent.btn.label}” />

Not only would this not cause a compiler error, but it would work correctly. Further, we can access the subcomponent button using ActionScript, such as this:

this.myComponent.btn.label = “modified”;

And that will also work. Thus it turns out that the [Exclude] is limited to altering what attributes are available within the tag that declares a component.

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