Is it possible to get the class or class name from inside a function?

Question

I'm trying to write debugging tools and I would like to be able to get the class name of the caller. Basically, caller ID.

So if I have a method like so, I want to get the class name:

public function myExternalToTheClassFunction():void {
   var objectFunction:String = argument.caller; // is functionInsideOfMyClass
   var objectFunctionClass:Object = argument.caller.this;
   trace(object); // [Class MyClass]
}

public class MyClass {

   public function functionInsideOfMyClass {
       myExternalToTheClassFunction();
   }
}

Is there anything like this in JavaScript or ActionScript3? FYI AS3 is based on and in most cases interchangeable with JS.

Answer 1

For debugging purposes you can create an error then inspect the stack trace:

var e:Error = new Error();
trace(e.getStackTrace());

Gives you:

 Error
     at com.xyz::OrderEntry/retrieveData()[/src/com/xyz/OrderEntry.as:995]
     at com.xyz::OrderEntry/init()[/src/com/xyz/OrderEntry.as:200]
     at com.xyz::OrderEntry()[/src/com/xyz/OrderEntry.as:148]

You can parse out the "caller" method from there.

Note that in some non-debug cases getStackTrace() may return null .

Answer 2

Taken from the documentation :

Unlike previous versions of ActionScript, ActionScript 3.0 has no arguments.caller property. To get a reference to the function that called the current function, you must pass a reference to that function as an argument. An example of this technique can be found in the example for arguments.callee .

ActionScript 3.0 includes a new ...(rest) keyword that is recommended instead of the arguments class.

Try to pass the Class name as argument:

Class Code:

package{

    import flash.utils.getQualifiedClassName;

    public class MyClass {

        public function functionInsideOfMyClass {

            myExternalToTheClassFunction( getQualifiedClassName(this) );

        }

    }

}

External Code:

public function myExternalToTheClassFunction(classname:String):void {

    trace(classname); // MyClass

}