AS3 Error #1065

Question

I must be missing something simple here, but in my main app, I import my Pages class, which in turn imports and dynamically instantiates one of two page types. Unfortunatley it only results in the error: ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable PageA is not defined. (when I call Pages.load("A");)

Pages

package pages 
{
    import pages.PageA;
    import pages.PageB;
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;

    public class Pages 
    {
        public static function load(pageType:String):void
        {
            var pageClass:Class = getDefinitionByName("pages.Page"+pageType) as Class;
        }
    }
}

PageA

package pages 
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;

    public class PageA extends Sprite 
    {
        public function PageA()
        {
            trace("PageA init");
        }
    }
}

PageB

package pages 
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;

    public class PageB extends Sprite 
    {
        public function PageB()
        {
            trace("PageB init");
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Exactly, the compiler plainly didn't include those classes in the compiled SWF. I've hit this wall somewhere before, when I've tried instantiating via generated string (in my case 'Gem'+an integer), and received about the same error. I went around it by creating a dummy constant, enumerating all the classes I plan to use, this made the compiler aware of this. So, make the following:

private static const PAGES:Array=[PageA, PageB];

And compile. Should do. Also, you don't need to import parts of "pages" package, they are already visible in your project, since your "Pages" class belongs to the same package.