Setting a TextField's text from a document class file - actionscript-3

Question

I've searched for a while, and nothing is working for me. I'm trying to make an idle game with my friend (who's doing graphics), and I'm just learning AS3 so I thought it'd be an easy-ish project to start with. I don't know how to make a health textbox that outputs the remaining health left. I searched for at least an hour and nothing I found has worked. Here's all my coding. I have numbers embedded for the textbox. The textbox's instance name is "health" so it's not too hard to find.
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
public var originalValue:Number = 10;
public var remainingValue:Number = uint(originalValue);
public var clickDamage:Number = 1;
public var health:TextField = String(originalValue);
public var moneyCount:Number=0;
public var mineralValue:Number=5;
public var destroyedCount:Number=0;
mineral.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, takeDamage);
public function takeDamage(e:Event):void
{
remainingValue = remainingValue - clickDamage;
if (remainingValue <= 0) {
remainingValue = originalValue;
moneyCount += mineralValue;
destroyedCount++;
}
health.text=String(remainingValue);
}
}
}
All I have for symbols so far is my textbox(health) and my button(mineral). Also, what's the difference between an instance name for a textbox symbol, and the instance name for the textbox inside? Sorry if it's a bad question, I'm just really confused and it's ticking me off because I've been trying to work around this problem for a while.

Answer 1

I think your main issue is a lack of understanding of how class files work. I've reworked your class file below and added some comments:
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
public var originalValue:Number = 10;
public var remainingValue:Number = 10; //no need to convert to uint
public var clickDamage:Number = 1;
public var health:TextField; //you can't assign a string to a text field var //health = String(originalValue);
public var moneyCount:Number=0;
public var mineralValue:Number=5;
public var destroyedCount:Number=0;
//mineral.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, takeDamage);
//in class files, you can't have lines of code outside of methods/functions create a constructor like below:
//the constructor function must match the name of class, and will run whenever you create an instance of this class
public function Main(){
mineral.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, takeDamage);
health.text = originalValue; //now assign the text to the text field
//this assumes you have a text field on the main timeline with the instance name of "health"
}
public function takeDamage(e:Event):void
{
remainingValue = remainingValue - clickDamage;
if (remainingValue <= 0) {
remainingValue = originalValue;
moneyCount += mineralValue;
destroyedCount++;
}
health.text= remainingValue.toString();
}
}
}
If (as may be gleamed from comment in your question), you have your health text field encapsulated in a symbol/movie clip, you'll need to access it like so:
myHealthSymbolInstanceName.myHealthTextBoxInstance.text = value;