Fake mouseclick on hover AS3 - actionscript-3

Question

This morning I stumbled to this question:
When hovering a button, is it possible to click it automatically after X seconds? So the user doesn't need to click it with his mouse?
How can I let Flash believe my mouse really clicked some button on the stage or brought up with as3?
I have a lot of buttons in my movie. So I prefer to use some code which will cover this function for all existing or coming up buttons in my movie.
I would normally use a code like this but is there some workaround to accomplish this in a different way? I do no want to add code to every button.
this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.OVER, onMouseClickEvent);
public function onMouseClickEvent(event:Event)
{
trace(event);
if(event.buttonDown) // if button goes down normally
trace("MOUSE CLICKED NORMALLY");
else
trace("left button was not down");
}

Answer 1

The easiest way i think, is to subclass Button.
Then you should add mouse over/out listeners, add click listener that looks like that
:public function clickListener(event:MouseEvent = null){...}
When the mouse is hovering, raise a flag that the mouse is on the object, start a timer and when the timer callback function is called, you check the if the flag (you turn the flag down, when the mouse is out) is true and just call clickListener()

Answer 2

Listen for MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER and start a timer, at the end of which the button will send the MouseEvent.CLICK event. In the mouseover handler, use the SystemManager to add a listener for MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT which cancels the timer. The timer removes the listener using the SystemManager as well. So does clicking the button.

Answer 3

Finally! Solved!
This did the trick:
public function runOnce(event:TimerEvent):void {
btnSignal.dispatch("KEYBOARD", btnCode);
}
Robusto & Radoslav Georgiev: Thank you for pointing the right direction!

Answer 4

(I'm answering this a little late but would like to give input for future people).
One way to 'skin this cat' is to simply let your hover event trigger a timer (i.e. 3 seconds). In an EnterFrame or other function let a number or Boolean change when 3 seconds is reached.
//Pseudo code
if(timer == 3)
{ numberVar = 1;
//or
BooleanVar = True;
}
else
{
numberVar = 0;
//or
BooleanVar = false;
}
//end
Then just as you connected your methods to a mouseEvent, connect those same methods to fire when numberVar == 1 or BooleanVar == True. That's it.
For super simplicity and readability let your MouseClickEvent just be numberVar = 1 or BooleanVar = True.
These become super simple to implement over time and in my experience are 'very' error proof. Easy to fix also in the case of a typo or something else. No super elusive imports either. Hope that helped.
Great question by the way (+ 1)
:D