Is it possible to intercept attribute getting/setting in ActionScript 3?

Question

When developing in ActionScript 3, I often find myself looking for a way to achieve something similar to what is offered by python's __getattr__ / __setattr__ magic methods i.e. to be able to intercept attribute lookup on an instance, and do something custom.

Is there some acceptable way to achieve this in ActionScript 3? In AS3 attribute lookup behaves a little differently for normal (sealed) and dynamic classes -- ideally this would work in the same way for both cases. In python this works beautifully for all kinds of objects (of course!) even for subclasses of dict itself!

Answer 1

Look a the flash.utils.Proxy object.

The Proxy class lets you override the default behavior of ActionScript operations (such as retrieving and modifying properties) on an object.

Answer 2

in as3 you can code explicit variables' accessors. ex Class1:

private var __myvar:String;

public function get myvar():String { return __myvar; } public function set myvar(value:String):void { __myvar = value; }

now as you create an instance of Class1 you can access __myvar through the accessor functions. if you want to set bindable that var you have to put the [Bindable] keyword upon one of its accessors. further, you can also implement the getter or the setter only, so your var will be read or write only. i hope it helps ;)

pigiuz