Actionscript Course

To work with dates and times in ActionScript, you use the Date object.
To use this object, you first must create an instance of the Date class, then you can access its properties and methots to manipulate dates and times in your code.
The general syntax to create a Date object is:

var obj_name:Date = new Date();
This code stores in the "obj_name" variable the curent date and time. It uses the date and time set on the client computer (the visitor).
  - Example: 
var dat:Date = new Date();
trace(dat);          // Tue Nov 9 09:58:18 GMT+0200 2010

The date represents a point in time. The "new Date()" expression gets the instant in which the Date object was created. But you can also add within parentheses a series of values for the year, month, day of the month, hour, minute, second, and millisecond to create a Date object that represents any point in time.
The syntax is: 
var obj_name:Date = new Date(year, month, day_month, hour, minute, second, millisecond);
- You must include at least two values, the "year" and the "month" are required, the other parameters will have the defaul value, 0.
The index (value) for the first month in the year (January) is 0, and 11 is the value used for the last month (December).
new Date(0) represents the 0 Unix time (January 1 1970).
  - Example: 
var dat:Date = new Date(2010, 0, 15);
trace(dat);            // Fri Jan 15 00:00:00 GMT+0200 2010

var dat2:Date = new Date(2010, 11, 15, 18, 22, 32, 88);
trace(dat2);           // Wed Dec 15 18:22:32 GMT+0200 2010

Another way to create a Date object with a certain point in time is by passing it a single String argument representing a point in time. The string must contain a year, month, and day of the month, at minimum, and can contain more.
  - Examples: 
var dat1:Date = new Date('1/15/2010');        // Month/Day/Year
trace(dat1);            // Fri Jan 15 00:00:00 GMT+0200 2010

var dat2:Date = new Date('Sun Jan 28 2007');
trace(dat2);            // Sun Jan 28 00:00:00 GMT+0200 2007

var dat3:Date = new Date('15 Oct 1976');
trace(dat3);            // Fri Oct 15 00:00:00 GMT+0300 1976

var dat4:Date = new Date('Sun Jan 28 2007 14:16:12');
trace(dat4);            // Sun Jan 28 15:16:12 GMT+0200 2007

If the date and time in the string doesn't have a valid time format, the Date object will return NaN.
To check if a Date object contains a valid date, use the isNaN() function, like this: 
isNaN(obj_date.valueOf())
- This expresion returns true if the value of the argument within parentheses is a number, else, returns false.
  Example: 
var dat:Date = new Date('Yesterday');
trace(dat);            // Invalid Date
trace(isNaN(dat.valueOf()));        // true
So, if isNaN() returns true, that dateObject is not a valid date.

The Time zone can be local time, appears as GMT, or Universal Time, abbreviated UTC (civilian time over the meridian 0, determined by astronomical measuring).

Date object Properties and Methods

Once you have a date stored in a Date variable, you can work with it and set or read any unit of time, in either UTC or in the local time zone.
ActionScript has several properties and methods for working with a Date object.
For example, if you want to access the current hour, you can use the getHours() method (or "hours" property), and to access the day of the month, you can use the date property (or "getDate()" method), like in the example below: 
// create a Date object, for the current date time
var dat:Date = new Date();
// gets the hour
var hour:int = dat.getHours();         // or dat.hours;

// gets the day of the month
var day:int = dat.date;            // or dat.getDate();


// Output the curent day and hour
trace(day);             // 19
trace(hour);            // 8

Also, you can use the properties and methods of Date class to change any unit in a Date object. See the following example: 
// create a Date object, for a specific date and time
var dat:Date = new Date('Sun Jan 28 2007 14:16:12');

// set a new value for the day of the month
dat.date = 11;           // or dat.setDate(11);

// set a new value for hour
dat.setHours(8);           // or dat.hours = 8;

// Output the new date
trace(dat);           // Thu Jan 11 08:16:12 GMT+0200 2007
The day of the month is set 11 (initialy 28), and the hour, 8 (initialy 14). The program automaticaly changes the day of the week according with the new settings (from "Sun" to "Thu").

Date Properties


Date Methods


Flash.utils.getTimer() returns the number of milliseconds since Flash Player is running.

Daily Test with Code Example

HTML
CSS
JavaScript
PHP-MySQL
Which HTML5 tag can be used to embed an external application (SWF, PDF) in web page?
<mark> <embed> <canvas>
<embed src="flash_game.swf" width="450" height="350" />
Which CSS pseudo-element adds a special style to the first line of a text?
:first-letter :before :first-line
#id:first-line {
  font-weight: bold;
  color: blue;
}
Click on the window object property which gets or sets the URL of current page.
window.location window.self window.status
var url = window.location;
alert(url);
Indicate the PHP function used to get the contents of a file or page and store it into a string.
fopen() file_put_contents() file_get_contents()
$homepage = file_get_contents("http://coursesweb.net/");
echo $homepage;
Date and Time in ActionScript 3

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