How to automatically set TextField()'s width

Question

Hi there,

I'm trying to set the width of a Textfield() object based on it's string content that I have set- Is there a way to dynamically set this once the string has been sent to the object?

I have:

var t1:TextField = new TextField()
t1.x = stage.stageWidth / 2;
t1.y = stage.stageHeight / 2;     
t1.text = "some string that i would want to render";      
t1.textColor = 0x000000;
t1.cacheAsBitmap = true;
addChild(t1);

Thanks for any suggestions... jml

Answer 1

you could try using the getCharBoundaries() method (it returns a rectangle surrounding a character at a specified index). Use that to get the rectangle from the first and last chars and set the width to the difference of those rectangles.

Pretty convoluted, there's got to be a better way, but if not this should work.

Answer 2

t1.text = "Some text";
t1.width = t1.textWidth + 5;
t1.height = t1.textHeight + 5;

Why the + 5? Because Adobe sucks and adds an internal gutter around your stuff. Per the docs this is supposed to be 2px per side, but it's actually slightly more, so you add another +1 for good measure.

Answer 3

TextField.autoSize?

edit:

You should read the documentation correctly, it's a member variable that actually needs to be set. I'll give you a quick example on how this works:

var tf:TextField = new TextField();
tf.text     = 'Some text.';
tf.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
tf.x = ( stage.stageWidth  - tf.width ) / 2;
tf.y = ( stage.stageHeight - tf.height ) / 2;

Alternatively you can also align the text field first and use TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER to keep it aligned in the center.

Answer 4

Here's the gist of what I am trying:

public class mysite extends Sprite {
   public var t1:TextField = new TextField();
}

public function maketext():void {
  t1.x = stage.stageWidth / 2;
  t1.y = stage.stageHeight / 2;
  t1.autoSize;
  t1.text = "some string that i would like to render";
  t1.textColor = 0x000000;
  //t1.cacheAsBitmap = true;
  addChild(t1);
}

//somewhere else:
maketext();