Webmaster Forum / Flash / Flash Actionscript / March 2006

I am readin in a XML file containg a personal chart structure in the form of a
Spider Chart. So I read through the XML structure and dynamically attach MC's
with attachMovie and then use recursive function calls to produce all the
children of each node of the spider diagram. Each MC that has children I assign
a variable called children to hold an array of them. All's weel but when I
allow one frame to go by and then try and read the children array it's empty!
All other regular variables I have assigned to the same MCs are there. I know
when you assign an array to a MC it is passed by reference and not by value. So
if my orginal loop variables are gone that where holding references to these
MCs would this cause any array data to go also?

So here is the code in the MC I am attaching

// set by parent
var children:Array=
var angle:Number
var name:String
var title:String

name_txt.autoSize=true
name_txt.text=name
title_txt.autoSize=true
title_txt.text=title

And this is how I pass the data into it,

first from the XML object callback

_global.xmlData
// Callback from XML_loader component
XML_finished=function(aNodes:Object){
    _global.xmlData=aNodes
    //trace(xmlData)

    // success so lets move on
    this.nextFrame()
}

I have previously set up some parent and subparent clips and then I call this
routine with the MC name subParent

// Recursive function that reads each childs children parameter and traverses
down it's family line calling itself each time to build the family tree
positionSubSubParents=function(aMc:MovieClip){
    var aChildren:Array=aMc.children.concat() // read the children list from the
parent MC
    var aMenuCount=aChildren.length
    if (aMenuCount==0){ // if this node has no children then exit
        return 0
    }
    var subs:Array=
    var aCentreX:Number=aMc._x
    var aCentreY:Number=aMc._y
    var itemGap=15
    var startAngle:Number=aMc.angle -((aMenuCount/2)*itemGap)
    var circum:Number=180
    var quad=whichQuad(aMc.angle)
    var xIndent:Number=aCentreX
    var yIndent:Number=aCentreY
    var myLevel:Number
   
    for (var i=0;i<aMenuCount;i++){
        myLevel=this.getNextHighestDepth()
        subs=attachMovie("item",("item_"+mcCount),myLevel)
        mcCount++
        subs.bkgColour=0x99cc00 // light green
        subs.name=aChildren.attributes.NAME
        subs.title=aChildren.attributes.TITLE
        subs.children=aChildren.childNodes

        switch (quad){
        case 1:
            startAngle=aMc.angle -((aMenuCount/2)*itemGap)
            angle=startAngle+(i*itemGap)
            subs.angle=angle
            subs._x=aCentreX+ 100 +Math.cos(degToRad(angle)) * circum
            subs._y=aCentreY+ Math.sin(degToRad(angle)) * circum
            break;
        case 2:
            startAngle=90 -((aMenuCount/2)*itemGap)
            angle=startAngle+(i*itemGap)
            subs.angle=angle
            subs._x=xIndent
            subs._y=yIndent+50+(i*50)
            break;
        case 3:
            startAngle=180 -((aMenuCount/2)*itemGap)
            angle=startAngle+(i*itemGap)
            subs.angle=angle
            subs._x=aCentreX- 100 +Math.cos(degToRad(angle)) * circum
            subs._y=aCentreY+ Math.sin(degToRad(angle)) * circum
            break;
        default: // 4
            startAngle=270 -((aMenuCount/2)*itemGap)
            angle=startAngle+(i*itemGap)
            subs.angle=angle
            subs._x=xIndent
            subs._y=yIndent-50-(i*50)

            break;
        }

        // call this function again recursively if this node has children
        if (subs.children.length<>0){
            positionSubSubParents(subs)
        }
    }
    return 1
};