CircularList in ActionScript 3 - actionscript-3

Question

I have been working on an AS3 project for some while and I think that I've hit a wall. My project requires a series of elements to be arranged in a Circular List, so I copied myself in a Circular List I had done before in C#.
Problem is, that one was heavily dependant on the usage of Generics. Now I don't have those.
Here are the codes. The T variable type represents the generics that I wish existed.
Node.as:
package
{
public class Node
{
var nodeContent:T;
var nextNode:Node;
function Node(nodeElement:T)
{
this.nodeContent = nodeElement;
}
}
}
CircularList.as:
package
{
public class CircularList
{
var head:Node;
var tail:Node;
var listLength:int;
function CircularList()
{
this.head = null;
this.tail = null;
this.listLength = 0;
}
function Add(addition:T)
{
adding:Node = new Node(addition);
if(this.head == null)
{
this.head = adding;
this.tail = adding;
head.nextNode = tail;
tail.nextNode = head;
}
else
{
tail.nextNode = adding;
tail = adding;
tail.nextNode = head;
}
listLength++;
}
function Find(requested:T):Node
{
var finder:Node = null;
var searching = head;
var i:int;
while(i <= listLength)
{
if(searching.nodeContent == requested)
{
finder = searching;
}
searching = searchig.nextNode;
i++;
}
return finder;
}
}
}
Is there a way to make this thing work without the generics?
EDIT: The real problem with this is that I want the NodeContent in the Node class to be an object. I want to make a list of people sitting on a circular table, basically, but I would like to have a code that I can reuse, rather than something specifically made for this problem

Answer 1

From the comments it seems like your best option here would be to use an interface.
Instead of using a type have all classes T implement an interface like INode. In this interface you can define all the functionality that your type T requires and implement it as needed in each of your implementing classes. This way you can change your function signatures to take type INode instead of Class or * and have a common set of methods that these functions can act upon.
function Add(addition:INode){
//add logic on INode
}
function Find(requested:INode):Node{
//find logic on INode
}
edit: a bit of info about interfaces,
http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/actionscript/as3-101-oop-introduction-to-interfaces/
say we have two Classes, A, B and each of these classes have a similar method, doTrace, that needs to be implemented differently. We can define an interface, implement it in both of these classes and pass that type into any method looking to call doTrace
Start with the interface called ITraceable,
public interface ITraceable{
function doTrace():void //all methods defined in interfaces are seen as public
}
Now our two Classes, A and B
public class A implements ITraceable { //implementing our interface, when we do this we need to define all methods in ITraceable
public function doTrace():void{
trace("I am A");
}
}
Do a similar thing for B
public class B implements ITraceable {
public function doTrace():void{
trace("I am B");
}
}
Now in some outside class we want to use this
public function letsTrace():void{
doTheTrace(new A()) //I am A
doTheTrace(new B()) //I am B
}
public function doTheTrace(object:ITraceable):void { //now we can pass both A and B into this function
object.doTrace(); //since ITraceable requires all objects that implement it have this method we can guarantee it will be here
}
Hope this helps you through your application