Ajusting as3 code to trigger on mouse event - actionscript-3

Question

Hi I found this really useful code for a timer counter, however it starts when I play the file. What I need is a way to change this into a MouseEvent.CLICK so it starts when the user presses a button and it stops when the uses presses another button. Is this do able?
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.globalization.DateTimeFormatter;
var timer:Timer = new Timer(100);
timer.start();
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, timerTickHandler);
var timerCount:int = 0;
function timerTickHandler(Event:TimerEvent):void
{
timerCount += 100;
toTimeCode(timerCount);
}
function toTimeCode(milliseconds:int) : void {
//create a date object using the elapsed milliseconds
var time:Date = new Date(milliseconds);
//define minutes/seconds/mseconds
var hours:String = String(time.hours);
var minutes:String = String(time.minutes);
var seconds:String = String(time.seconds);
var miliseconds:String = String(Math.round(time.milliseconds)/100);
//add zero if neccecary, for example: 2:3.5 becomes 02:03.5
hours = (hours.length != 2) ? '0'+hours : hours;
minutes = (minutes.length != 2) ? '0'+minutes : minutes;
seconds = (seconds.length != 2) ? '0'+seconds : seconds;
//display elapsed time on in a textfield on stage
timer_txt.text = hours + ":" + minutes + ":" + seconds+"." + miliseconds;
}

Answer 1

The easiest thing to do would be to use timer.stop() and timer.start(). This won't be perfectly accurate, as calling stop() and start() basically restarts the current delay (100ms), but if that's good enough then it should work.
Also note that the timer code isn't perfectly accurate as is, since Timer events are dispatched with slight offsets based on framerate and script execution time. For an accurate timer you need to poll getTimer(), but pausing and resuming becomes a little more complicated to implement.