Background Processing Class in AS3


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I’ll be trying to release some useful classes over the next couple of months, many of which I used to build Rainbow. So starting off here’s a class that became pretty handy when running a function that chewed up lots of CPU time.

Background.as
This is a simple background process manager class that uses up a specific ratio of CPU time to process functions that are registered to it. For instance if you have to generate a whole bunch of sprites, but don’t want the .swf to freeze while the number crunching happens, you can register a sprite creation function that will create one sprite at a time. on Each ENTER_FRAME event the Background class will continue to call its registered functions until all of it’s alloted CPU time has been used.

Code:

//**********************************
//
// © 2009 - CODE AND VISUAL PTY LTD
// https://www.codeandvisual.com
//
// **********************************

package {
 //
 // *******************************************************************
 //
 //
 // IMPORTS
 //
 //
 // *******************************************************************
 import flash.display.*
 import flash.events.*
 import flash.utils.*
 public class Background{
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  //
  //
  // PROPERTIES
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  private var pFrameMonitor:DisplayObject
  private var pCPURatio:Number
  //
  private var pIdleLength:Number
  private var pFunctions:Array
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  //
  //
  // INITIALISATION
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  public function Background(thisFrameMonitor:DisplayObject, thisCPURatio:Number){
   pFrameMonitor = thisFrameMonitor
   pCPURatio = thisCPURatio
   init()
  }
  private function init(){
   pFunctions = new Array()
   pIdleLength = 1000/pFrameMonitor.stage.frameRate*pCPURatio
   pFrameMonitor.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,doIdle)
  }
  private function doIdle(evt:Event){
   var myStartTime:Number = getTimer()
   while(getTimer()-myStartTime<pIdleLength&&pFunctions.length>0){
    for(var i in pFunctions){
     var myFunction:Function = pFunctions[i]
     myFunction()
    }
   }
  }
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  //
  //
  // API
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  public function addFunction(thisFunction:Function){
   if(pFunctions.indexOf(thisFunction)==-1){
    pFunctions.push(thisFunction)
   }
  }
  public function removeFunction(thisFunction:Function){
   var myIndex:int = pFunctions.indexOf(thisFunction)
   pFunctions.splice(myIndex,1)
  }
  public function removeAllFunctions(){
   pFunctions = new Array()
  }
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  //
  //
  // DESTROY
  //
  //
  // *******************************************************************
  public function destroy(){
   removeAllFunctions()
   pFrameMonitor.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, doIdle)
  }
 }
}

Example Usage:

package{
  import flash.display.*
  public class Main{
    public var pBackground:Background 
    public function Main extends MovieClip(){
      pBackground = new Background(this, .2);
      myBackground.addFunction(myFunction);
    }
    public function myFunction(){
      // This function will get called until .2 of the ENTER_FRAME interval is used
    }
  }
}

You can add as many functions as you like to the pFunctions array, it will call each of them in the order they were added, and keep cycling until the allotted CPU time is used up.

You can download the class form here:
Background.as

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