[flexcoders] How to iterateOverChildren of an component not in display

[alexeoscar]

Suppose you have a MyView.mxml file, which is basically a Panel with several 
children (Form, FormItems, Buttons...).

Is it possible to iterate over the MyView and get all the information about its 
children (types, id ...) before it is displayed.

In my Main.mxml if I have this function

        public function iterateOverChildren(comp:Container):void {
            // Get the number of descriptors.
            trace("Running iterateOverChildren for " + comp.id);
            if (comp != null)
            {
            var n:int = comp.childDescriptors.length;
            for (var i:int = 0; i < n; i++) {
                var c:ComponentDescriptor = comp.childDescriptors[i];
                var d:Object = c.properties;
                
                // Log ids and types of objects in the Array.
                trace(c.id + " is of type " + c.type);
                
                // Log the properties added in the MXML tag of the object.
                for (var p:String in d) {
                    trace("Property: " + p + " : " + d[p]);
                }
            }
            }
        }


Why does this call not work ?

var myV = MyView();
iterateOverChildren(myV);

It only works if I add a statement like
addChild(myV); 
before the iterateOverChildren call. (But that's not what I want, I want to 
iterate the descriptions without adding it to display).

-alex