? Derive a clicked button's 'level' and instance name?

Question

I am trying to do something that I did quite often in Flash.
When a button is clicked, I need to understand it's instance name
and heirarchy as the application would identify it when looping
through the DisplayList.
For example, if a button, 'myButton', is clicked on in the
application ' myApp', I need to get its programatic name as
referenced by the application with 'myApp0.myButton'.
In Flash, with AS2, I could have the button tell me its
programatic name with:
myButton.onRelease=function(){
trace(this);
The result in Flash would be '_level0.myButton';
How can I get this type of informtion with Flex? Is it
different with MXML and AS3?
For reference, I am using a similar function to that below to
'index' the list of objects in Application.application:
function traceDisplayList(container:DisplayObjectContainer,
indentString:String = ""):void {
var child:DisplayObject;
for (var i:uint=0; i < container.numChildren; i++) {
child = container.getChildAt(i);
trace (indentString, child, child.name);
if (container.getChildAt(i) is DisplayObjectContainer) {
traceDisplayList(DisplayObjectContainer(child), indentString
+ " ")
Any information and examples would be appreciated.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Ok, I found a partial solution, but I could still use some
help with event listeners. The solution I found is:
Within Flex, on a button click, the application can list the
click target when an event is called. So, when a user clicks a
button, in the 'click' action of the button, the following code
will return the object information I was looking for.
<mx:Button label="myButton"
click="trace(event.currentTarget)"/>
Now I am interested in seeing if I can dynamically "listen"
for clicks without adding an event command to the buttons. For
instance, on the button above, I can have the button tell me its
name, as shown above, or I could listen for the click and derive
it. For example:
<mx:Button label="myButton"
click="trace(event.currentTarget); sayName(event)"/>
Then I can have AS code listening for that event:
private function sayName(event:MouseEvent):void {
trace(event.currentTarget);
The problem with the listener solution 'sayName', is that it
requires a button to pass the event to 'sayName()'. I am really
looking for a solution which listens for ANY button click, checks
to see if it is a button, or a text link, or any object that might
act as a button (as opposed to a graphic or movie without 'semantic
events' with the application performing a resulting action).
So this is what I have tried:
In an AS Class, I added the following to the main class
function to initialize it:
addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickHandler);
addEventListener(MouseEvent.DOUBLE_CLICK,
doubleClickHandler);
Then, within the class I added the following functions:
//possible event listeners?
private function clickHandler(event:MouseEvent):void{
var tempES:String = "type : "+event.type+" objectName :
"+event.currentTarget;
trace(tempES);
private function doubleClickHandler(event:MouseEvent):void{
var tempES:String = "type : "+event.type+" objectName :
"+event.currentTarget;
trace(tempES);
I get nothing. I suspect that I get no results because the
Application has the buttons and these listeners are not referencing
the application properly to listen for button clicks.
Am I off base? Can anyone help me understand how to listen
for click activity and get the object information even though the
listener code is in an imported class?
Thank you