Flash:HaXe and Flash 9

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This tutorial assumes you're jumping into haXe anew but have some idea of the syntax and how to program.

Here is a compile.hxml for Flash 9:

-swf haxegame.swf
-swf-version 9
-swf-header 300:300:30:000000
-main Main

You will probably want to add

-debug

so that you can get additional stack trace information when runtime errors show up.

Here is a basic Main.hx:

class Main
{		
	
	public static function main()
	{
	}
}

This will compile, but you'll get a blank screen. Now the question is, how to start adding interesting stuff?

We can start with a debugging displayer, DebugDisp.hx:

import flash.text.TextField;

class DebugDisp
{
	public var debugmsg : TextField;
	private var colors : Array <Dynamic>;
	private var cycle : Int;
	private var datalog : String;
	
	public function new()
	{

		debugmsg = new TextField();
		
		debugmsg.x = 4;
		debugmsg.y = 4;
		debugmsg.width = 300-4;
		debugmsg.height = 300-4;
		debugmsg.textColor = 0xFFFFFF;
		debugmsg.text = "hi";
		
		datalog = "";
						
		cycle = 0;
				
	}
	
	public function up(textval : String)
	// Update with new text.
	{		
		debugmsg.text = textval;		
	}	

	public function upcycle(textval : String)
	// Update with new text and cycle colors.
	{
		cycle+=1;
		if (cycle>=colors.length) {
			cycle = 0;
		}
		debugmsg.text = textval;
		debugmsg.textColor = colors[cycle];		
	}	
	
	public function color(color : Dynamic)
	// Set a color. Overwritten by colorcycles.
	{
		debugmsg.textColor = color;
	}

	public function colorcycle(newcolors : Array <Dynamic>)
	// Set a cycle of colors, with a new one each time upcycle is called.
	{
		colors = newcolors;
		cycle = 0;
		debugmsg.textColor = colors[cycle];
	}

	public function log(textval : String)
	// Add to a persistent log which can be printed later.
	{
		datalog = datalog + textval + "\n";
	}
	
	public function uplog()
	{
		debugmsg.text = datalog;
	}
	
}

This debugger does several useful things:

Uses a Textfield to display text
Can be given arbitrary strings with the up() function
Can be given colors and cycled through colors with color(), colorcycle(), and upcycle()
Can write a multiple-entry log for cases where you want to aggregate data with log() and uplog()

To use the debugger we have to change Main.hx a little to include the class:

import DebugDisp;
import flash.Lib;

class Main
{		
	
	public static function main()
	{
              var mydebug : DebugDisp = new DebugDisp();
              Lib.current.addChild(mydebug.debugmsg);
	}
}

If you aren't familiar with how Flash works: it has a global display object, the stage, represented in haXe by the Lib.current instance. You add things to the display with addChild; additional functions exist to change the order or remove children. Some display classes can have their own children, allowing you to compose complex, well-organized trees of graphics.

To work with the Flash libraries more you should consult the Flex 2 reference: