Importing Packages in AS3

Even the most simple task seems to take me forever in Flex, since I have to troll through reams of documentation to make sure I understand the concepts involved. This morning I came across something in one of my references that went something like this:

"Because this class is in the same package as the other class you want to use, you don't need to add an import statement in order to use it."

I went through reams of documentation looking for something to verify this, but couldn't. Finally, someone on a Google Group I belong to posted this quote from Colin Moock's Essential Actionscript 3.0.

"Code in a given package can refer to the classes in that package by their unqualified names... To gain access to a class in another package, we use the import directive..."

So yes, it's true. You don't have to import classes in the same package as the one where you are working.

AS3 Basics

I've been struggling a lot with the Flex documentation (can ya tell?), and a lot of it, I think, is because the people who write docs know the whole thing inside and out. So they don't realize that before they go off all half cocked telling you how to write the code in a package, they should probably take a moment or two to tell you where to put the package, what to call the package so it will work, and how you refer to it from within your code and MXML. That's just an example of my "issues" with the docs, but a very pertinent one.

I'd pretty much worked all those things out with a little creative "reading between the lines" and reading the same articles on the Developer's Center over and over. However, I finally stumbled across the free ActionScript 3 Cookbook Excerpts from O'Reilly, and let me tell you, it has really codified a lot of stuff I thought I'd figured out, as well as correcting some misconceptions as a result of the roundabout route I took to the figurin'. I have only read up to Chapter 2, which, incidentally, explains all that stuff about packaging. I think I'll be ordering this book tomorrow! Wonder if it comes in MS Reader format...?