Stopdrag not working as intended

Question

I try to drag something, and on stopdrag it should start a function if certain requirements are fulfilled:

if(e.target.dropTarget.parent == targetName || e.target.dropTarget.parent.parent.parent.getChildByName("cloud").getChildByName("itemPlacer").getChildAt(1) == targetName){

This works well when I drag and stopdrag correctly (requirements are fullfilled) but if the requirements aren't met I get an error saying that the place I refer to cannot be null. I know that the problem lies after the || part, but how can I resolve this?

Is there a shorter way of doing these checks? At the moment, I am going through a lot of parents and getchildat statements and was wondering if there was another way.

Answer 1

You can assign a variable to your container then use the variable in your conditional statements.

Edit:

In order to access the getChildByName method, your elements should be cast as DisplayObjectContainer at the minimum. MovieClip , Sprite extend DisplayObjectContainer, so you can use either. Here I use MovieClip but the choice was arbitrary.

var main:MovieClip = e.target.dropTarget.parent ;
var container:MovieClip  = main.parent.parent as MovieClip;

var cloud:MovieClip = container.getChildByName("cloud");
var itemPlacer:MovieClip = cloud.getChildByName("itemPlacer");

var child:MovieClip = container.getChildAt(1);

if( main == targetName || child == targetName )
  //your code here

For the other question, check for null values before anything else.

if(main != null && child != null)
  {
      if( main == targetName || child == targetName )
      {
         //your code here
      }

  }else{

        //your code here
  }