It sounds like you are asking two things:
- How to list all of the properties/methods of a UIComponent.
- How to list all of the UIComponents in the Flex SDK.
The first one can be done with describeType(). Given that the method is passed dynamically using TextInput, you need to just include all of the UIComponents into the SWF. You can do that with the following include statement for each component in the SDK (this example is with the Button):
include mx.controls.Button; Button;.
Then you can do something like this:
var className:String = myTextArea.text; // mx.controls::Button or mx.controls.Button
var clazz:Class = flash.utils.getDefinitionByName(className);
var methods:Array = getMethods(clazz);
var properties:Array = getProperties(clazz); // write a similar method for accessors and variables
/**
* Returns a list of methods for the class.
* Pass in the superclass depth for how many classes
* you want this to return (class tree). If it's -1, it will return the whole method list
*/
public static function getMethods(target:Object, superclassDepth:int = -1, keepGeneratedMethods:Boolean = false):Array
{
var description:XML = DescribeTypeCache.describeType(target).typeDescription;
var hierarchy:Array = getHierarchy(target);
var methodList:XMLList = description..method;
methodList += description.factory..method; // factory is required if target is Class
var methodName:String
var methods:Array = [];
var declaredBy:String;
var methodXML:XML;
var i:int = 0;
var n:int = methodList.length();
for (i; i < n; i++)
{
methodXML = methodList[i];
declaredBy = methodXML.@declaredBy;
methodName = methodXML.@name;
// we break because the xml list is orded hierarchically by class!
if (superclassDepth != -1 && hierarchy.indexOf(declaredBy) >= superclassDepth)
break;
// ignore methods that start with underscore:
if (methodName.charAt(0) == "_" && !keepGeneratedMethods)
continue;
methods.push(methodName);
}
// sort the method list, so there's some kind of order to the report:
methods.sort(Array.CASEINSENSITIVE);
return methods;
}
The second one, listing the UIComponents in the SDK, is a bit more complex because there's no stable list of components in the SDK (depends on version, etc.). What you can do, however, is get a list of every class included in the swf. You do this by generating a Link Report (which is used for helping out modules), which is just a compiler argument:
-link-report=my_report.xml
Then you can figure out a way to find the unique xml nodes in that file, and which ones extend UIComponent. I use ruby and the nokogiri xml parser for ruby to do that. There is also a neat AIR app to visualize the Link Report.
If you're doing the first case, that method should get you started on listing all properties/methods of a UIComponent. If you're doing the second, that will give you a list of all UIComponents included in the swf.
Let me know if that helps,
Lance