Problem using Flash Components in multiple SWC files

Question

[Edit: Short version - how do you properly handle namespace collisions in SWC files if one SWC has fewer classes from that namespace than another?]

I have a rather large Flash application which I'm building in Flash Builder (because coding/debugging in the Flash IDE is... not good) and I've got a ton of external SWC files which I'm linking in to my application. This has worked well so far - the file size is on the large side, but it's a lot simpler than loading in SWFs, especially since I am extending most of the classes in each SWC and adding custom code that way (it's a very design-heavy app.) The problem I'm having is when I have Flash Components, like ComboBox or TextInput, in more than one SWC. Whichever SWC was compiled last will work fine, but the others will fail with errors like the following:

TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.display::MovieClip@1f21adc1 to fl.controls.TextInput.
    at flash.display::Sprite/constructChildren()
    at flash.display::Sprite()
    at flash.display::MovieClip()
    at com.company.design.login::LoginForm()
    at com.company.view::Login()[/Users/ken/Workspace/src/com/company/view/Login.as:22]
    at com.company.view::Main/showLogin()[/Users/ken/Workspace/src/com/company/view/Main.as:209]
    at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
    at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
    at com.company.view::Navigation/handleUIClick()[/Users/ken/Workspace/src/com/company/view/Navigation.as:88]

I've been researching components, ComponentShim, etc. but I'm running up against a brick wall. I thought it might be the fact that some of the components had their skins modified in the source FLA, so I tried replacing them with the default skins, but that didn't seem to help. How can I ensure that I have the components imported and available to all my classes, yet still be able to skin them and include them in my various FLAs? (I am never creating new instances of them, they are all laid out by my designer.)

Answer 1

I dunno if this will help you, but I had a similar problem with an asset in a SWC library that was the visual representation for a class in my main project. What I ended up doing was having the visual asset be a Flash-created class that extended the class in my project rather than having the same name.

For example, my asset and the class were both com.blah.TitleBackground. To fix the issue I made the visual asset have teh class of com.blah.TitleBackgroundAsset and set the base class for the component to com.blah.TitleBackground. That fixed this particular issue for me. I still have more to wade through, but your post sparked the idea for the solution to get around the name conflicts.

Answer 2

I can't find the detailed fix (apparently, the work email I used at the time was trashing older messages without my knowledge!) but the short answer is to create one FLA that has all the components you want to use in it, set those components (and the ComponentShim) to 'Export for Runtime Sharing'. Then, in your other FLAs, whenever you want a component, drag it from the components FLA library (it should show up in your main library with 'Import for Runtime Sharing' turned on.) Make sure you don't have a ComponentShim in your main library. You'll need the compiled component SWF file in the same folder as your FLAs.

What this does is keep all the component code, including skins, in one central place, so when you compile (be it as a SWF or a SWC, though this problem mainly crops up when using SWCs) there are no conflicts.