Associative Arrays

An Associative Array can be made in ActionScript 3 by using an Object instead of an Array. You use the Object to make a name/value pair. Name/Value pairs consist of a name and a value and are separated by a colon. The name is what you use to reference the value. When you reference what is in the Associative Array you just write the name as if it was a property on the Object. Here is an example of how to make an Associative Array.

var info:Object = {name:"Tony", occupation:"Bouncer", iq:80};
 
trace("My name is " + info.name + " and I am a " + info.occupation + " with an IQ of " + info.iq + "." );

You could also write it out long-handed and the effect would be the same. Below is the same thing but the names are added as dynamic properties of the newly instantiated Object.

var info:Object = new Object();
info.name = "Tony";
info.occupation = "Bouncer";
info.iq = 80;
 
trace("My name is " + info.name + " and I am a " + info.occupation + " with an IQ of " + info.iq + "." );

They only problem with this is that you lose the length property on this Associative Array. If you try getting the length property it will come up as undefined. I looked this up and found that Senocular actually has a class that fixes this. That class is called AssociativeArray and it can be found here. When I first tried it I got an error at line 32. I didn’t read the class to figure out what was wrong, but I commented out the line throwing the error and it seems to work fine. Here is an example of that class in action.

var info:AssociativeArray = new AssociativeArray();
 
info.name = "Tony";
info.occupation = "Bouncer";
info.iq = 80;
 
trace("My name is " + info.name + " and I am a " + info.occupation + " with an IQ of " + info.iq + "." );
trace(info.length);