FREE Flash Tutorial

Here is a lesson on Creating Event Listeners in Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0. Go to www.frenchsquared.com for full tutorials.
Full Tutorial Here

Event Listeners
An Event is something that happens, such as a mouse click that Flash can respond to. Events are often things a user does, such as pressing a key or moving the mouse, but events do not have to be user initiated. A function ending or a sound playing can also trigger a response from Flash. Flash and ActionScript needs a way to detect and respond to these events. An event listener or event handler is created to give your object the ability to hear. In basic terms an event lister is something that tells Flash to do this when that happens. Sounds similar to a function, but this event can be user initiated.



Copy and past the example code onto the empty key frame on the actions layer. Remember that objects need to be named. In this tutorial we have already named the circle yourObject_mc.

function onClick (yourObject_mc:MouseEvent):void {
trace("yourObject has been clicked")
};
yourObject_mc.addEventListener (MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick);

Press Control-Enter and Test your Movie.

So first you created a function called onClick you then told Flash that onClick would used with yourObject_mc and a MouseEvent, :Void is the data type tag. You currently set it to Void. Everything inside the {} is the actually action you want to happen, in this case trace "your object has been clicked". The last part is when you actually gave the MovieClip yourObject_mc the ability to hear. You added an event listener to yourObject_mc by first defining the name of the object you want the event listener applied to. (yourObject_mc). Next, addEventListner was applied to the named object. Finally, you defined the event listener by filling in the parameters (MouseEvent.Click, onClick).