Dynamic class & property

Question

Hi there!
I would like to know, if it is possible to mimic the behavior of XML dynamic class:
var xm:XML =
    <question idAttr="atribute xml">
    </question>;
trace(xm.attributes());
trace("Attributes: "+xm["attributes"]);
xm["attributes"] = {a:"atr1", b:"atr2"}; (in my dynamic class with attributes function, I get ReferenceError: Error #1037)
trace("Attributes: "+xm["attributes"]);
trace(xm.attributes());
So I can call:
     xm.attributes() method which gives me XML attributes
and use
     xm["attributes"] = {a:"atr1", b:"atr2"};
which writes to the "attributes" property and not references the XML class function.
My question:
How can I do the same in my custom dynamic class ?
Gregory

Answer 1

As you might noticed some syntaxes of XML class' properties and methods are not conventional to AS3. This, perhaps, hints to the fact that XML class is not an AS3 class in its purest sense. In other words it is probably written in a different language (C? C++?...).
In AS3, unlike in other languages, you cannot name property and method the same. So, there is no way to have both "attributes" property and "attributes()" method.
Nevertheless, if you want to emulate XML functionality to some extend and enumerate/return dynamically set properties, you can definitely do that. This is an excellent case for using accessors (setters and getters):
package 
     public dynamic class DynamicClass
          public function DynamicClass()
          public function get attributes():Object {
               var obj:Object = { };
               for (var prop:String in this) {
                    obj[prop] = this[prop];
               return obj;
          public function set attributes(obj:Object):void {
               for (var prop:String in obj) {
                    this[prop] = obj[prop];
Usage:
var dc:DynamicClass = new DynamicClass();
dc.prop2 = "BLAH";
dc.attributes = { propA: "bbb", anotherProp: 456 };
trace(dc["attributes"]);
for (var prop:String in dc.attributes) {
     trace(prop, "=", dc.attributes[prop]);
Message was edited by: Andrei1