Comments on: Using Your Own Custom Metadata in AS3

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:55:23 +0000

Awesome

By: Lex

Lex — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:59:46 +0000

Wow! Almost like .Net. :)
This feature could be very useful, thanks.

By: Praveen

Praveen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:41:47 +0000

Nice blog. It would be helpful if you tell more detail about “-keep-as3-metadata MyTag” and the process to add it in lib. Awaiting your response.

By: Jacob Wright

Jacob Wright — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:31:05 +0000

I don’t have time right now for a full tutorial on using custom metadata. I’ll work on one at some point. But if you use “-keep-as3-metadata Listen” in your Flex Library Project’s properties under “Additional Compiler Options” then when you have a class with the metadata [Listen(arg="value")] above it, or above a method or property, you can see that metadata in the XML of the flash.utils.describeType method.

You can get more information here:
http://www.dreaminginflash.com/2008/01/26/metaprogramming-actionscript3-metadata-in-flex-builder-3/
and here:
http://coenraets.org/blog/2007/10/annotating-actionscript-classes-with-custom-metadata-simple-orm-framework-for-air/

By: toddy

toddy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:05:13 +0000

Could you please explain detail about custom metadata tage usage?

I look for the approach urgent

By: Easy object reflection with Spicelib at Marc’s Musings

Easy object reflection with Spicelib at Marc’s Musings — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:51:15 +0000

[...] this blog entry for a little info on how to do custom [...]

By: Youd Fred Garcia

Youd Fred Garcia — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:36:20 +0000

Jacob, I am new to Flex and my background if from .NET. I found interesting the information regarding custom metadata tags. Could you please send me a tutorial if possible.

I would like to know if there is the posibility to associate that metadata tag to a concrete object by the compiler, or if I will have to used “describeType” to dehydrate the concretes at runtime. what are the alternatives

Thanks,
Youd

By: Bob Calco

Bob Calco — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:53:04 +0000

AS3 Metadata tags is one of those topics a few people write about, but nobody goes all the way. They invariably mention the -keep-as3-metadata option, and invariably punt when it comes to showing how to use it in action. It drives me bonkers because I love Java annotations and .NET attributes and would like somebody to provide some concrete comparisons between them. Annotations/attributes are powerful features which make all kinds of interesting things possible at runtime, like ORM mapping tools and a host of dynamic code generation schemes–but I get the impression that metadata tags are not very useful at runtime in AS3, that they are more compile-time features. In any case, yes, PLEASE write the tutorial!

By: Jacob Wright

Jacob Wright — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:44:38 +0000

Very true. There’s trade-offs to using metadata for sure.

By: peper

peper — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:20:01 +0000

I worked with metadata lately. There’s a trap in Your idea. You won’t se a compiler error if there’s no this.closeButton object or ‘click’ event.
It’s not much more code in

this.closeButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, closeClockHandler);

and everything is checked in compile time, and I use constant, not string value for event name.