11.12. Assembling an Advanced Form
Problem
You want to put together a form to which you can add advanced features such as one-step submission, validation, and multipage forms.
Solution
Create a custom Form
class.
Discussion
In HTML, forms are created within the structure of a
FORM
element. Because HTML forms provide a
container into which all the form elements can be added, it is
possible to add more advanced functionality to them. ActionScript
does not provide an analogous structure, however. Therefore, Flash
offers nothing that inherently holds multiple elements on a page
together into a true form. If you want to add advanced features to
your forms, you must create a Form
class to act
as the container for all the form elements.
The Form
class’s primary
function is to keep track of the otherwise disparate elements (text
fields, list boxes, etc.) that you want to be part of a single form.
To accomplish this, your Form
class needs to
have an array property to which elements can be added. In the example
code, this array property is named formElements
.
Next, the Form
class also needs a method,
addElement( )
, by which elements can be added to
forms.
Here is the basic implementation of our Form
class:
// Define the Form constructor as a global class, as with other UI components. _global.Form = function ( ) { // Initialize theformElements
array to store references to all the elements. this.formElements = new Array( ); }; // TheaddElement( )
method adds an element to theformElements
array. ...
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