AS3 (animate cc 2018) Why does date keep coming back undefined? - date

Question

I'm a beginner, so I'm sensing I'm making a simple mistake but I haven't been able to figure it out or find reference to a similar error on other forums.
My end goal is to create a graphic that changes colour depending on the time of day. Right now my issue is that I can not get a Date object to return anything for the life of me.
This is all I have put in a file called Main.as, that is called in one of the keyframes:
public class Main extends MovieClip {
var myDate1:Date = new Date();
trace(myDate1);
}
According to the API, if I don't define a specific date it should just take the current date from my system. But instead of doing the trace I keep getting "error 1120: Access of undefined property myDate1".
Why am I getting this error?
I should note I'm trying to make this for mobile so I've been testing the movie using AIR launcher.

Answer 1

Your script is wrong. You are not supposed to write code directly inside the class body. You need to define methods:
public class Main extends MovieClip
{
// Class constructor.
public function Main()
{
super();
// Output the current date.
trace(NOW);
}
// Static class property that always returns the current date.
static public function get NOW():Date
{
return new Date;
}
}