LibraryManager – centalized library asset management

Ever find that you have about 4350823498 different MovieClips in your library that you would like to ‘attach’ ? Yeah yeah it’s not attach in AS3 but you know what I mean! Anyways this was inspired by a code snippet I first read on Blitz Agency’s blog but have seen in many shapes and form since. So here’s my version of using getDefinitionByName with string constants to help centralize things.

Update: I should point out, it’s important to remember that this is especially useful when used on MovieClips loaded from a separate assets SWF.  When you’re working with only one SWF, you could just call the class directly.  Thanks to the folks at ActionScript.org forums for reminding me :)

Also: Flex Users will need a slightly different method of either packaging SWCs or using a combination of registerClassAlias and getClassByAlias.  More on that in a later post.

package com.pj_co.managers
{
        import flash.display.DisplayObject;
        import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;

        /**
        * Central list of library items attached in code
        * @usage provides a runtime method for access dynamicly loaded assets from the lib
        * @author patrick cousins
        */
        public class LibraryManager
        {

                public static const 	ORANGE_LARGE	: String = "LargeRollGraphicsOrange";
                public static const 	GREEN_LARGE	: String = "LargeRollGraphicsGreen";
                public static const 	TEAL_LARGE	: String = "LargeRollGraphicsTeal";
                public static const 	PURPLE_LARGE	: String = "LargeRollGraphicsPurple";
                public static const 	BLUE_LARGE	: String = "LargeRollGraphicsBlue";

                public function LibraryManager()
                {

                }

                public static function getAsset ( assetLinkageID : String ) : DisplayObject
                {
                        var asset : Class = Class ( getDefinitionByName ( assetLinkageID ) ) ;

                        return new asset() as DisplayObject;
                }
        }

}

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