Comments on: accessor methods, actionscript, and you

By: polyGeek

polyGeek — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:41:02 +0000

I just watched your interview with Ryan. Good stuff. I’d request that there is an option in FB to chose the sort of code formatting the developer uses. I know that most follow the Java standard of putting { on the line after the method declaration or conditional. However I put the { on the same line.

By: todd

todd — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:36:17 +0000

I just watched the video interview of you with Ryan S. And I thought I’d post my simple IDE enchanement here (note, it’s also up in the FB Jira as feature request FB-17375). Basically, I’m looking for quick access into the native operating systems file browser.

When exploring projects in the Flex Navigator view pane, it’s be very nice to be able to right-click (option-click) the name of the project (and or individual files) and have an option to open up the native operating system’s file browser in that location.

I find that right now i hvae to
1) right-click
2) bring up the properties window
3) copy the file path to the project
4) open a native file browser
5) paste the copied path into the file browser
6) use as needed.

I also find that do to many quirks with SubEclipse plugin for Subversion that I need to use Subversion tools in the native file browser all the time, and as a result I’m doing stpes 1 though 6 many times/day above.

Thanks.

By: jonathan doklovic

jonathan doklovic — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:21:57 +0000

I agree with “Epoch of Entropy”.
One of the things that drives me crazy about FB3 is that it has almost all of the same concepts (or at least it should) as the JDT but it either implements them differently or features are simply missing.

Almost everything on the JDT editor view context menu is appropriate for as3 code and should behave the same way.

I do a lot of coding where I’m switching between Java and AS3 (developing backend with frontend) and it pains me that the JDT has really great refactoring tools but FB does not.

Don’t re-invent the wheel. Flash developers: stop bashing Java for no reason and realize that the two are very similar and should share toolsets whenever possible. If it’s not perfect, at least it’s consistent.

By: John

John — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:58:40 +0000

I use them but most of the time I don’t need to see them, so I would like to be able to avoid stepping into every single setter/getter when debugging since it adds lots of extra steps. So, a feature I would like is an enable/disable of “step into” during debugging.

By: Alex C

Alex C — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:48:37 +0000

I create accessors (getter/setters) when I create the private members (properties) of the class. It would be a great time-saver to be able to automate the process based on the name of the private variables in the class.

Also, one feature I’m dying to see is a way to collapse sections of code; my current MXML file is about 900 lines long. I can collapse the controls using the little (-) symbol; no such feature exists for functions. It would also be nice if we could define our own blocks that could then be collapsed/expanded.

By: Christophe Bismuth

Christophe Bismuth — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:17:32 +0000

Hi Scott,

* Later as I need them,
* I want to batch-create accessors for more than one variable at once,
* I don’t prefix them.

Thank you for staying tuned,
Chris

By: Epoch of Entropy

Epoch of Entropy — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:02:31 +0000

In almost all cases I use private variables with getters and setters, even if there is no logic behind assignment. Private vars are named with a “_” as a style preference, usually sharing the same name as the public getters/setters.

For about half of protected variables I do not generate getters and setters, but they all also almost always named with a “_” as a matter of style.

This is a carry over from Java, where I principally learned OOP practices.

But, in many cases a complex datatype will have many public attributes with error checking logic. Creating a dozen getters/setters is an arduous task that almost every developer has had to do at some point. A task that can be easily handled by a RegExp of what’s selected, and a loop.

The Java perspective has MANY excellent tools (in the Source drop down) that save developers hours and hours of work over the course of a large project. In my opinion making the Flex IDE emulate the Java perspective’s “Generate Getters and Setters” would make the most sense from both a consistency and functionality viewpoint.

It also wouldn’t hurt to pull out some other features from the Java perspective’s Source drop down, such as:

Override/Implement Methods…
Sort Members…
Format Element
Format

https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-11636

By: Lance Hilliard

Lance Hilliard — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:09:10 +0000

Visual Studio 2008 creates my event handler methods for me “magically”, and I expect the same from FB. I don’t see the functionality in v3 (am I missing it)? Is it slated for v4?

By: Brian Holmes

Brian Holmes — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:57:08 +0000

I create them later. I really like the c# syntax for getters and setters. It’s much more smooth than java, with less code for when you do have to use them.

By: gSOLO

gSOLO — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:17:52 +0000

* Do you typically create accessors when you create member variables, or later as you need them?

I create them when building the class.

* Would you want to batch-create accessors for more than one variable at once, or do you usually only do it for one variable at a time?

I currently do it one var at a time, but it would be convenient to be able to to it in a batch.

* How do you name your variables that don’t have accessors? Do you prefix them? (i.e. m_color, m_flavor)

Double underscore for private vars.

private var __foo : Foo;
public function get foo () : Foo {
return __foo;
}
public function set foo (value : Foo) : void {
__foo = value;
}

private var __bar : Bar;

protected var fooBar : FooBar;