Container Classes

The Container classes in Flex are designed to hold other components and perform positioning and sizing on their behalf. The Container class itself implements many of the necessary operations for the child classes. Container extends UIComponent and adds a significant amount of additional functionality. Often, if you are searching for the root behavior of one of the specific subclasses you will find that the code actually resides in Container.

The Container class has a major piece of functionality that deals with how it lays out its children. Normally, the children of a DisplayObjectContainer or UIComponent are direct children of the component. However, the children of a Container may be moved from direct to children to grandchildren by means of the contentPane property/child. This topic is dealt with in detail in the contentPane article.