Display list and classes

Question

I have a class called shapeC that only creates a rectangle and then addChild(rectangle);.  That class is instantiated on the main timeline.  Currently, the only way you can see that rectangle is to add the instantiated class to the stage via addChild(shapeC);.  My question is, is there a way that the shapeC class can add the rectangle to the root stage without requireing the instantiated class to be added to the stage?
Thanks

Answer 1

Yes, you can add directly to another stage, but my question would be "why"?  There are times you want to delegate the logic of controlling what's on stage to another class and can be a responsibility of something commonly refered to as a "controller".  There are times when you want a class to simply create something and return it, known as a "factory".  What you're talking about is both of those things lumped into one.  Unless you really have a reason to have a factory during its creation add it to stage, I'd suggest you do it exactly as you're doing now.  Not to mention the only reference stored of your rectangle will be in your ShapeC class and/or on your main display list.  That can be dangerous and cause all kinds of headaches.  But if you really want to do it, you'd have to pass in a DisplayObjectContainer (i.e. Sprite or MovieClip) as an argument to the constructor (or other method depending on the code path of your class) of the shapeC class.  Once it has created the rectangle add it to the passed in object's display list (passedInObject.addChild(rectangle));  So the code would look something like this.
//From main timeline
var shape:ShapeC = new ShapeC(this);
//ShapeC constructor
public function ShapeC(targetDisplayObject:DisplayObjectContainer)
     var rectangle:Sprite = new Sprite();
     rectangle.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000);
     rectangle.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 100, 100);
     targetDisplayObject.addChild(rectangle);
If I were to do something like this, I'd just make ShapeC a static factory class and do something like this:
//From main timeline
ShapeC.createRect(this);
//in ShapeC class
public function createRect(targetDisplayObject:DisplayObjectContainer)
     blah blah blah same as above...
You might also want to pass in screen positions and what not as well.  Hope it helps.