User Guide

Defining events in ActionScript components 141
Custom components that extend existing Flex classes inherit all the events of the superclass. If
you extend the Button class to create the MyButton class, you can use the events inherited
from the Button class, such as
mouseOver or creationComplete, as the following example
shows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
xmlns:MyComp="myComponents.*">
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import flash.events.Event;
private function handleClick(eventObj:Event):void {
// Define event listener.
}
private function handleCreationComplete(eventObj:Event):void {
// Define event listener.
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<MyComp:MyButton
click="handleClick(event);"
creationComplete="handleCreationComplete(event);"/>
</mx:Application>
Your custom components can also define new events based on the requirements of your
components. For example, the section “Using data binding with custom properties”
on page 132 showed how to define a custom event so that properties of your component can
work with the Flex data binding mechanism.
This section describes how to handle events within a custom component and how to create
events for it.
Handling predefined events within the component
The previous section showed a custom component, MyButton, dispatching two events. In
that section, you defined the event listeners in the main application file.