Am I doing AS3 reference cleanup correctly?
- by Ólafur Waage
In one frame of my fla file (let's call it frame 2), I load a few xml files, then send that data into a class that is initialized in that frame, this class creates a few timers and listeners.
Then when this class is done doing it's work. I call a dispatchEvent and move to frame 3. This frame does some things as well, it's initialized and creates a few event listeners and timers. When it's done, I move to frame 2 again.
This is supposed to repeat as often as I need so I need to clean up the references correctly and I'm wondering if I'm doing it correctly.
For sprites I do this.
world.removeChild(Background); // world is the parent stage
Background = null;
For instances of other classes I do this.
Players[i].cleanUp(world); // do any cleanup within the instanced class
world.removeChild(PlayersSelect[i]);
For event listeners I do this.
if(Background != null)
{
Background.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, deSelectPlayer);
}
For timers I do this.
if(Timeout != null)
{
Timeout.stop();
Timeout.removeEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, queueHandler);
Timeout.removeEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE, queueCompleted);
Timeout = null;
}
And for library images I do this
if(_libImage!= null)
{
s.removeChild(Images._libImage); // s is the stage
_libImage= null;
}
And for the class itself in the main timeline, I do this
Frame2.removeEventListener("Done", IAmDone);
Frame2.cleanUp(); // the cleanup() does all the stuff above
Frame2= null;
Even if I do all this, when I get to frame 2 for the 2nd time, it runs for 1-2 seconds and then I get a lot of null reference errors because the cleanup function is called prematurely.
Am I doing the cleanup correctly?
What can cause events to fire prematurely?
