Multiple Comboboxes with single instance of Array Collection

Question

First off - thanks to everyone for their contributions.  This forum provides a lot of good information.
I'm stuck on a particular problem and I suspect I'm not thinking about the issue correctly.
I'm developing a dynamic module that instantiates components at runtime based on an XML scheme.  Many of these components are drop-downs that are chained togther (a selection in one drives the population of the next)
I loop through the initial XML document to create and layout the components.  I have been using a single Array Collection to populate the drop-down.  This worked fine with the chained comboboxes since I only load one combox initially.  However, when I add a couple of static combo boxes, the arraycollection seemed to be binding to the orginal combobox.  For example, if I create 3 combo boxes they have drop-down values that display all 3 lists appended together.  I was a bit surprised because I didn't think that I could bind an Array Collection.  I certainly haven't defined a Binable ArrayCollection.
I thought I could solve the issue by simply creating a unique Array Collection at runtime - one for each element.  However, I don't think this is possible or I can't figure out how to create a new Array Collection with a dynamic name - something like this:
I was hoping this would work -
var newDropDown_[numOfElement]:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection(); 
I've tried to use a Dictionary object to store each ArrayCollection.  I couldn't get that to work properly.
Essentially - my code loops on the number of components to add:
for (var i:int = 0; i < numFormElements; i++)
          for (var j:int = 0; j < numvalues; j++)
                                var valuefield:String = 'value_' + [j+1];
                                var obj:Object=new Object();
                                obj.label=instFields[i][valuefield].@label;
                                obj.data=instFields[i][valuefield].@data;
                                newDropDown.addItemAt(obj,j);
Then I add the components:
          var c:ComboBox = new ComboBox ();
            c.labelField='label';
            c.name=numberOfElement.toString();                                  
            c.dataProvider=    newDropDown;
            _h1.addChild(c);
            numComboDropDwns.push(c);
I need a way of looping, getting data and populating each component independently??
Any ideas?
Thanks,
John

Answer 1

I went a different route and solved the issue.  For someone looking at a similar problem - this what I ended up doing:
I just loaded one array collection with data for all of the drop-downs on the form.  I then populated each dataprovider with individual elements from the array.
for (var i:int = 0; i < numFormElements; i++)
for (var j:int = 0; j < numvalues; j++)
                                var valuefield:String = 'value_' + [j+1];
                                var obj:Object=new Object();
                                obj.label=instFields[i][valuefield].@label;
                                obj.data=instFields[i][valuefield].@data;
                                newDropDown.addItemAt(obj,elementCounter);
                                elementCounter = elementCounter + 1;
I keep track of the element #, number of values for each element and the overall index for the array.
Each data provider is then loaded with the subset from the array:
for (var z:int = (_counter - _numvalues) ; z < _counter; z++)
                            var _label:String=    newDropDown.getItemAt(z).label.toString();
                            var _data:String = newDropDown.getItemAt(z).data.toString();
                            c.dataProvider.addItem({label:[_label],data:[_data]});
This seems to work nicely - each component is created and loaded with only their data.  I spent 3 days searching for a way to create a dynamic arraycollection at runtime.  I don't think it's possible - but I'm not sure it was the best method anyway.