Often times when I am making dynamic scripts in Flash or JavaScript, I want to call an object method using a string. It may be a situation where I am stuck using fscommand (due to a customer request of a Flash version <8) or just writing script with script.

The problem that comes with this method is the advent of ActionScript 3 with Flash CS3/Flex 2 and the rising use in namespaces by JavaScript developers (myself included). Both encour a heavy usage of object methods instead of one-off functions. Dynamically calling singleton functions is easy, you can just use subscript notation, e.g. object[‘member/method’]. What you can’t do with this method is pass it any dot syntax and expect it to work e.g. object[‘subobject.method’]. The subscript notation is only meant to work one level. So the previous example won’t work. In order to fix this issue and to make sending object methods/members in a single string a little easier, I wrote a function that takes a string and a base object (the default is the window object if no object reference is passed) and returns the method/member. (I know at this point that some will simply direct me to ECMAScript’s built in eval() function, but I personally avoid using it at all costs as it can have unintended, and unsecure results. I’ll let Stephen Chapmen tell you because this article is about something else.)

Read Full Article...