Objects within Objects - actionscript-3

Question

I have an object in my Library called Bottle. Bottle is made up of "Glass" and "Cap" instances. There are two more symbols in my library called Cap, and Glass.
When I click on the cap of Bottle, it says that this object is of class Cap, and when I click on the glass, it says it is of type Glass. Each one of these objects has base class flash.display.MovieClip.
However, in my code when I do:
var bottleOnStage:Bottle = new Bottle();
addChild(bottleOnStage);
var newColor:uint = 0x00ff00;
var newColorTransform:ColorTransform = new ColorTransform();
newColorTransform.color = newColor;
bottleOnStage.Glass.transform.colorTransform = newColorTransform;
I get this error:
TypeError: Error #1010: A term is undefined and has no properties. at MethodInfo-1()
Am I accessing the Glass property wrong? Is it because I haven't created an instance of Glass? I am confused on how objects within objects work in Flash.
EDIT
var cap:Cap;
var glass:Glass;
Above is what is in my Bottle.as file. In my Main.as file I have:
var bottleOnStage:Bottle = new Bottle();
bottleOnStage.cap = new Cap();
bottleOnStage.glass = new Glass();
addChild(bottleOnStage);
var newColor:uint = 0x00ff00;
var newColorTransform:ColorTransform = new ColorTransform();
newColorTransform.color = newColor;
bottleOnStage.glass.transform.colorTransform = newColorTransform;
When I run this code, no changes occur to the "glass" portion of the bottle. Why is this? I know that it is this line; I have traced and debugged all of the other lines, and the colors I am tracing are correct, etc. When I add "cap" and "bottle" to "bottleOnStage" using addChild, I get a duplicate of these two symbols, so this is apparently not the way. Basically, how do I modify "cap" and "glass" on stage?

Answer 1

It looks like your are confusing Classes with instances. Instance names cannot have the same name as a Class name (in the same scope).
Glass is your class. If you have variable with the name of "Glass" inside your bottle class, you need to rename it so it isn't ambiguous with your class name Glass.
bottleOnStage.glassInstanceName.transform.colorTransform = newColorTransform;
As a tip, to avoid this situation best practice is always make your instance names begin with a lower case letter, and always make your Class names begin with an upper case letter. (That also helps with code highlighting in most coding applications as well as here in Stack Overflow - notice how your uppercase items are hightlighted?)
As far as your error goes, you likely don't have an actual object in your variable yet.
Doing the following:
var myGlass:Glass;
Doesn't actually make an object (the value is null), it's just defining a placeholder for one. You need to instantiate using the new keyword in order to create an actual object.
var myGlass:Glass = new Glass();
Now you'll have an object in that variable.
EDIT
To address your edit, sounds like your probably want to something like this:
package {
public class Bottle extends Sprite {
public var cap:Cap;
public var glass:Glass;
//this is a constructor function (same name as the class), it gets run when you instantiate with the new keyword. so calling `new Bottle()` will run this method:
public function Bottle():void {
cap = new Cap();
glass = new Glass();
addChild(cap); //you want these to be children of this bottle, not Main
addChild(glass);
}
}
}
This keeps everything encapsulated and adds the cap and glass as children of the bottle. So bottle is a child of main, and cap and glass are children or bottle.

Answer 2

Whats is the name of the Glass attribute in the bottle?
if you have for example:
public class Bottle {
public var glass : Glass;
}
You can access the glass with:
var bottle : Bottle = new Bottle();
bottle.glass = new Glass();
Glass is the class. bottle.glass is the attribute "glass" of the class Bottle.
Hope it helps.