Developing Flex 4 Components: Using ActionScript 3.0 and MXML to Extend Flex and AIR Applications

3. Anatomy of a Component

Now that you have seen all the components present within Flex 4.0, let’s focus on what actually makes up the structure of a component and the core behaviors and functionality that you need to provide for it to operate within the Flex framework. In this chapter, you get a clear understanding of how to structure your components, both in ActionScript and MXML, and which component is most suitable as the base class for your own components. Finally, you get an overview of a unique type of component, but I’ll save that surprise for you until later in this chapter.

Component Life Cycle

Regardless of how simple or complex you make your components, there is one constant: Your component needs to be instantiated and when it does, ...