User Guide

98 Creating Advanced MXML Components

You can also define events to be dispatched when a property changes. This enables you to

signal the change so that an event listener can recognize the change. For more information on

events, see “Working with events” on page 107.

You can call a component’s custom methods and access its properties in ActionScript just as

you would any instance method or component property, as the following application shows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"

xmlns:MyComp="myComponents.*">

<MyComp:StateComboBoxSetGet id="myStateCB" shortNames="true"/>

<mx:Button click="myStateCB.shortNames=!myStateCB.shortNames;"/>

</mx:Application>

In this example, selecting the button toggles the display format of the state name between the

short and long formats.

Defining inspectable properties

You should precede the variable or set function with the [Inspectable] metadata tag if you

plan to use the component in an authoring tool such as Adobe Flex Builder. The

[Inspectable] metadata tag must immediately precede the property’s variable declaration or

the setter and getter methods to be bound to that property, as the following example shows:

<mx:Script>

<![CDATA[

// Define public variables.

[Inspectable(defaultValue=true)]

public var shortNames:Boolean = true;

]]>

</mx:Script>

For more information on the [Inspectable] metadata tag, see Chapter 5, “Using Metadata

Tags in Custom Components,” on page 45.