Auto-sizing and positioning in Flex

Question

I am working on a flex app that uses XML templates to dynamically create DisplayObjects. These templates define different layouts that can be used for each page of content in the app (ie , 2 columns, 3 columns etc etc). The administrator can select from one of these and populate each area with their content.

The templates add one of 3 types of DisplayObject - HBox, VBox or a third component - LibraryContentContainer (an mxml component that is defined as part of the app) - which is effectively a canvas element with a TextArea inside.

The problem that I am getting is that I need each of these areas to automatically resize to fit the length of the content but don't seem to be able to find an effective way to do so.

In the LibraryContentContainer, when the value of the TextArea is set, I am calling .validateNow() on the LibraryContentContainer. I then set the height property on both the TextArea and LibraryContentContainer to match the textHeight property of the TextArea.

In the following example, this is the LibraryContentContainer, viewer is the TextArea and the value property of the TextArea is bound to this.__Value. v is the variable containing the content for the textarea

this.__Value = v;
this.validateNow();

this.viewer.height = this.viewer.textHeight;
this.height = this.viewer.height; 

This works to a degree in that the TextArea grows or shrinks depending on the length of content, but it's still not great - sometimes there are still vertical scrollbars even tho the size of the TextArea has grown.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

Adam

Answer 1

I think the problem lies not with your dynamically added components, but with the component they're being added to. How is the height of this component being determined? If you set verticalScrollPolicy and horizontalScrollPolicy on this container to off, do your scrollbars disappear? If that's the case, then you'll need to look at how this component is sized rather than your hbox, vbox, or whatever it is you're adding.