HOW DO YOU SEND AN EVENT "OUT" TO A COMPONENT?

Question

I am writing an AIR app that has many components.  The main application has a "start" button to begin a new project, and when you exit a project, the application returns to the start page.  Even though you exit back to the start page, the major MXML components used in the application do not get destroyed because there is no way to destroy them so they just sit there idle in the background and not visible in the "start" state.  The problem is that when a user clicks the "start" button again to start a new project, the MXML components appear in the new project in the old state that they were in because there is no obvious way to reinitialize them.  If there was a way to destroy the components, then when they were recreated in a new project I could initialize them with a creationComplete handler.  But since you can't literally destroy an MXML component, I need a way for the components to be able to listen to the main program for a click event on the "start" button, and then each component initializes itself when it hears the event.  So instead of components passing an event up to the main application, I need the main application to send an event down to the components.  Is there a way to send an event from the main application out to the various components?  (or is there a way to destroy an MXML component so that you can recreate it later that I am unaware of?)

Answer 1

Yes, that will do the job, though it's better to use a custom event and you don't need a property.
I quickly made a tiny example in Flash using a static variable as a central dispatch hub..
Create a class:
package  {
    import flash.events.EventDispatcher;
    public class EventHub extends EventDispatcher {
        public static var dispatcher:EventHub = new EventHub();
        public function EventHub() {
            // constructor code
// in the component add this
EventHub.dispatcher.addEventListener("INIT_COMPONENT", _onInitComponent);
// the handler for the event inside your component
private function _onInitComponent(e:Event):void{
    trace("INIT_COMPONENT received");
// wherever you need to trigger init, add this
EventHub.dispatcher.dispatchEvent(new Event("INIT_COMPONENT"));
Paul