Daniel R.: Flex 2 Runtime Error 1065

Today while working on some code I started getting this error and stack trace:

ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable LoadTest is not defined.
	at global/flash.utils::getDefinitionByName()
        at ... (rest of stack trace deleted)

Looking the error up in the documentation didn't help point the way to what might be going on since this had nothing to do with a "variable":

1065 Variable _ is not defined. You are using an undefined lexical reference. For example, in the following statements, the statement trace(x) generates an error because x is undefined. However, the statement trace(y) doesn't generate an error because y is defined: trace("hello world") trace(x) // x is undefined var y trace(y) // No error, y is defined.

In this case I was trying to dynamically instantiate a class by first finding the definition of that class and then newing it. Something like this:

public function createInstance(className:String):Object {
    var instance:Class = Class(getDefinitionByName(className));
    new instance();
}

It turns out the reason why the error was being thrown was that in my Flex Application I didn't have anything which "used" the class. In other words the compiler thought that the class was left over junk and didn't include it in the compiled swf. By adding in a use of it, everything started working. As example use would be something like:

private static const loadTestRef:LoadTest = null;

If there is another way to get this same behavior, please let me know.

Comments

Thanks for this tip! I was struggling with the same problem and it seems to work now. Enrique.

Posted by: Enrique Rodriguez | August 25, 2006 8:49 AM

The most common cause is not declaring a class which is linked to a movie clip as public. Here is more on the issue.

Posted by: Andrew Paul Simmons | June 7, 2007 11:37 AM

Thanks Daniel! It was indeed very helpful.

Posted by: Bijit Bose | June 22, 2007 9:04 AM

Thankyou Enrique Rodriguez ! That's something that people new to as3 OOP maynot have noticed. It's often the simple things! Classes need to be public if they are providing the base for a symbol in the library. Cheers! Hoecus-Poke-us

Posted by: Ben Hoe | September 4, 2007 5:01 AM

Error just started popping up, was fixed by using your tips :) Thanks!

Posted by: Bram | November 6, 2007 9:07 AM

Thanks for that - that helped!

Posted by: Judit | February 13, 2008 9:13 AM

Damn, you're right! I was spending days around this problem. This is a bug, because the import statements should clarify which classes are known in the app.

Posted by: Chris | May 6, 2008 12:25 PM

Few weeks ago I was desperately looking for how to dynamically instantiate classes in AS3 but I was unable to find any resource on this, but fortunately today i was searching for 'flash Error #1065:', and I found what I was looking for weeks. Thanks a TON !

Posted by: Mudit Tuli | August 25, 2008 2:51 AM

Daniel R.

Flex 2 Runtime Error 1065

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