Calling a function in another .swf, possible?

Question

I have two movies... main.swf and content.swf, and I'm trying to call a function in my main.swf from my content.swf. Here is the code..
//function in main.swf
function appear (event:MouseEvent):void{
     TweenLite.to(title1, 1, {autoAlpha:1, overwrite:false});
//try to call from loaded content.swf
close_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, btnClick);
function btnClick(event:MouseEvent):void {
     MovieClip(parent.parent).appear();
I got an error message as soon as i click on close_btn. It says appear() is not a property or method.
Would someone help me out on this please?
Thank you very much.

Answer 1

I think it is not a good OOP design. It is much better to design applications in a such way that they do not depend on placements (especially parents). Particularly, if your application acts as a component that can be consumed in some unpredictable fashion. Theoretically, if you write something that will become a stand alone swf - it should perform with no errors both as stand-alone and when loaded.
You are already dealing with the results of this design flow. The most cumbersome and inflexible aspect of your approach is to capture parents chain.
In your case I would totally dissociate you loaded swf from the placement and couple it with the parent via events.
The best way would be for your loaded swf to dispatch and event that is consequently captured by it parent(s) no matter, again, where it is placed. For instance it can be done the following way:
// in your top movie
// say the loaded swf is set to a variable:
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
var loadedSWF:MovieClip;
// your loading routine
// once it is loaded
// note that capture is set to true so that
// no matter depth of event origination
// it will be captured by this scope
loadedSWF.addEventListener("close", onCloseClick, true);
function onCloseClick(e:Event):void {
     // do whatever
// IN YOUR LOADED SWF
close_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, btnClick);
function btnClick(event:MouseEvent):void {
    // dispatch event
     dispatchEvent(new Event("close"));