Passing Repeater dataProvider info to an AS function showing 1067 error

Question

Hi,
I'm getting a compiler error 1067: Implicit coercion of a
value of type String to an unrelated type Number, with this
following code (against the lines
x="getRelXPos({wallRepeater.currentItem.x});" and
y="getRelYPos({wallRepeater.currentItem.y});"), I haven't a clue
what it means though.
The data wallAC comes in from an external XML file with a
bunch of thumb nodes, x and y values are 0.0 to 1.0 so I can make
up a relative coordinate system regardless of window size.
MXML:
<mx:Repeater id="wallRepeater"
dataProvider="{wallAC.thumb}">
<mx:VBox
width="100"
height="120"
x="getRelXPos({wallRepeater.currentItem.x});"
y="getRelYPos({wallRepeater.currentItem.y});">
</mx:VBox>
</mx:Repeater>
AS:
public function getRelXPos(xVal:Number):Number {
var iW:Number = myCanvas.width;
var xPos:Number = xVal * iW;
return xPos;
public function getRelYPos(yVal:Number):Number {
var iH:Number = myCanvas.height;
var yPos:Number = yVal * iH;
return yPos;
My first guess was that Flex was treating the
wallRepeater.currentItem.x and y values as strings and so was
expecting a string back, so I changed the functions to look like
this:
public function getRelXPos(xVal:String):String {
var iW:Number = myCanvas.width;
var xPos:Number = parseFloat(xVal) * iW;
return xPos.toString();
But that still showed the same compiler error.
Any ideas on where I'm going wrong here? I should point out
that I'm pretty rubbish at Actionscript!
Cheers,
Rob

Answer 1

woohoo!! I seem to be getting good at answering my own
questions:
x="{getRelXPos(wallRepeater.currentItem.x)}"
y="{getRelYPos(wallRepeater.currentItem.y)}"
public function getRelXPos(xVal:String):Number {
var iW:Number = myCanvas.width;
var xPos:Number = parseFloat(xVal) * iW;
return xPos;
public function getRelYPos(yVal:String):Number {
var iH:Number = myCanvas.height;
var yPos:Number = parseFloat(yVal) * iH;
return yPos;
Is it a string, is it a number, who knows?!! At least it
works ;)