Styling UITextField

Question

I've been playing around with different methods of determining at runtime the width of a "label" so that I can resize the "label" because I don't want it to truncate. I've finally found an easy solution through UITextField which allows me to set the .autoSize which is great! However, now I'm trying to "style" (simply adjust font and font size) of the UITextField but it seems that I have to do it manually with '.htmlText' (which I'll gladly accept if that is the ONLY way).

I'm using the .text to set the value of the label.

My test case involves a HBox (I'm actually using a Grid but they should be the same and I've done testing on both):

1. I style the HBox and the style carries through to the UITextField. I don't believe this will work for me because I have other components inside that I need to style differently.
2. I've tried: UITextFormat and TextFormat (I see that the .htmlText being updated accordingly but the output doesn't update. Then I noticed that whenever I called hbox.addChild(myUITextField) it would override the .htmlText
3. I've tried setting the style with myUITextField.setStyle("fontSize", 20) before and/or after the call to addChild neither of which made an impact on the display as per what I noted above.

Changes are being made but they seem to be overrided when I add it to the display.

So what do I need to do in order to style the UITextField aside from manually setting it along with my contents in .htmlText? Solutions not using UITextField is fine as long as there is some easy way of not truncating the text.

EDIT: I want to just do textField.setStyle('fontSize', 20) and expect that every time I change the text, I wouldn't need to use HTML to go with it (so I can just do textField.text = 'something else' and expect that it will still have a font size of 20). This is what I meant by not using .htmlText (sorry if I wasn't clear before).

2nd EDIT: I guess I should present the whole issue and maybe that'll clarify what I did wrong or couldn't achieve.

My intent is to have a Grid and add text into it. I do not want it to wrap or scroll so I add it to the next row in the Grid when the current row's children total width exceeds some number. In order to add it to the next row, I need to be able to calculate the width of the text. I would like to be able to style that text individually based on cases and there might be other components (like a TextInput). Essentially what I'm trying to accomplish is "Fill in the Blank".

I've included code to show what I'm currently doing and it works somewhat. It might be un-related to the original issue of styling but I can't figure out how to adjust the distance between each UITextField but aside from that this fits what I would like to accomplish. Relevant to the question is: I would like to change the way I style each UITextField (currently setting .htmlText) into something a bit straightforward though like I previously mentioned I'll gladly accept using .htmlText if that's the only solution.

So I have a Grid with x Rows in it and in each row, I have exactly one GridItem. Based on the input, I add UITextField and TextInput into the GridItem going on to the next GridItem when necessary. If you have a better way of doing so then that would be better but I guess what I really want is to find a different way of styling.

Also another problem, I'm not sure of the exact way to add a TextField into the display. I tried:

var t : TextField = new TextField();
t.text = "I'm a TextField";
hBox.addChild(t);   // doesn't work
//this.addChild(t); // doesn't work either

But I get the following error:

TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.text::TextField@172c8f9 to mx.core.IUIComponent.

Here's what I have that's working.

private function styleQuestionString(str : String) : String {
  return '<FONT leading="1" face="verdana" size="20">' + str + '</FONT>';
}

private function loadQuestion(str : String) : void {
  /* Split the string */
  var tmp : Array = str.split("_");

  /* Track the current width of the GridItem */
  var curWidth : int = 0;

  /* Display components that we will add */
  var txtField : UITextField = null;
  var txtInput : TextInput = null;

  /* Track the current GridItem */
  var curGridItem : GridItem = null;

  /* Track the GridItem we can use */
  var gridItemAC : ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();

  var i : int = 0;

  /* Grab the first GridItem from each GridRow of Grid */
  var tmpChildArray : Array = questionGrid.getChildren();
  for (i = 0; i < tmpChildArray.length; i++) {
    gridItemAC.addItem((tmpChildArray[i] as GridRow).getChildAt(0));
  }
  curGridItem = gridItemAC[0];
  gridItemAC.removeItemAt(0);

  /* Used to set the tab index of the TextInput */
  var txtInputCounter : int = 1;

  var txtFieldFormat : UITextFormat = new UITextFormat(this.systemManager);
  txtFieldFormat.leading = "1";

  //var txtFieldFormat : TextFormat = new TextFormat();
  //txtFieldFormat.size = 20;

  /* Proper Order
    txtField = new UITextField();
    txtField.text = tmp[curItem];
    txtField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
    txtField.setTextFormat(txtFieldFormat);
  */

  var txtLineMetrics : TextLineMetrics = null;
  var tmpArray : Array = null;

  curGridItem.setStyle("leading", "1");

  var displayObj : DisplayObject = null;

  for (var curItem : int= 0; curItem < tmp.length; curItem++) {
    /* Using UITextField because it can be auto-sized! */

    /** CORRECT BLOCK (ver 1)
    txtField = new UITextField();
    txtField.text = tmp[curItem];
    txtField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
    txtField.setTextFormat(txtFieldFormat);
    ***/

    tmpArray = (tmp[curItem] as String).split(" ");

    for (i = 0; i < tmpArray.length; i++) {
      if (tmpArray[i] as String != "") {
        txtField = new UITextField();
        txtField.htmlText = styleQuestionString(tmpArray[i] as String);
        //txtField.setTextFormat(txtFieldFormat); // No impact on output
        txtLineMetrics = curGridItem.measureHTMLText(txtField.htmlText);
        curWidth += txtLineMetrics.width + 2;

        if (curWidth >= 670) {
          curGridItem = gridItemAC[0];
          curGridItem.setStyle("leading", "1");
          if (gridItemAC.length != 1) {
            gridItemAC.removeItemAt(0);
          }
          // TODO Configure the proper gap distance
          curWidth = txtLineMetrics.width + 2;
        }
        displayObj = curGridItem.addChild(txtField);
      }
    }

    //txtField.setColor(0xFF0000);  // WORKS

    if (curItem != tmp.length - 1) {
      txtInput = new TextInput();
      txtInput.tabIndex = txtInputCounter;
      txtInput.setStyle("fontSize", 12);
      txtInputCounter++;
      txtInput.setStyle("textAlign", "center");
      txtInput.width = TEXT_INPUT_WIDTH;
      curWidth += TEXT_INPUT_WIDTH;

      if (curWidth >= 670) {
        curGridItem = gridItemAC[0];
        if (gridItemAC.length != 1) {
          gridItemAC.removeItemAt(0);
        }
        // TODO Decide if we need to add a buffer
        curWidth = TEXT_INPUT_WIDTH + 2;
      }
      curGridItem.addChild(txtInput);
      txtInputAC.addItem(txtInput);

      /* Adds event listener so that we can perform dragging into the TextInput */
      txtInput.addEventListener(DragEvent.DRAG_ENTER, dragEnterHandler);
      txtInput.addEventListener(DragEvent.DRAG_DROP, dragDropHandler);
      txtInput.addEventListener(DragEvent.DRAG_EXIT, dragExitHandler);
    }

    /* Add event so that this label can be dragged */
    //txtField.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, dragThisLabel(event, txtField.text));
  }
}

Answer 1

EDIT BASED ON THE ASKERS FEEDBACK: I didn't realize you wanted to just apply one style to the whole textfield, I thought you wanted to style individual parts. This is even simpler for you, won't give you any trouble at all :)

var textFormat: TextFormat = new TextFormat("Arial", 12, 0xFF0000);
myText.setTextFormat(textFormat);

Be aware that this sets the style to the text that is in the TextField, not necessarily future text you put in. So have your text in the field before you call setTextFormat, and set it again every time you change it just to be sure it stays.

It's probably best if you use a normal TextField as opposed to the component. If you still want the component you may need to call textArea.validateNow() to get it to update with the new style (not 100% sure on that one though) Adobe components are notoriously bad, and should be avoided. :(

To see all available options on the TextFormat object see here

END EDIT ---------

This is easy enough to just do with CSS in a normal old TextField.

var myCSS: String = "Have some CSS here, probably from a loaded file";
var myHTML: String = "Have your HTML text here, and have it use the CSS styles";

// assuming your textfield's name is myText
var styleSheet: StyleSheet = new StyleSheet();
styleSheet.parseCSS(myCSS);
myText.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
myText.styleSheet = styleSheet;
myText.htmlText = myHTML;

Supported HTML tags can be found here
Supported CSS can be found here

Answer 2

The reason you have a problem adding Textfield to containers is that it doesn't implement the IUIComponent interface. You need to use UITextField if you want to add it. However, that's presenting me with my own styling issues that brought me to this question.

A few things I know:

1. TextField is styled using the TextFormat definition, and applying it to the textfield. As Bryan said, order matters.

2. setStyle does nothing on IUITextField, and the TextFormat method doesn't seem to work the same as in normal TextFields. (Edit #2: Ahah. You need to override the "validateNow" function on UITextFields to use the setTextFormat function)

3. To autosize a TextArea, you need to do something like this (inheriting from TextArea):

import mx.core.mx_internal; use namespace mx_internal; ... super.mx_internal::getTextField().autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; this.height = super.mx_internal::getTextField().height;

Found this code on, I think, on StackOverflow a while back. Apologies to the original author. But the idea is that you need to access the "mx_internal" raw textfield.

1. Text and TextArea have wrapping options. (Label does not). So if you set the explicit width of a Text object, you might be able to size using the measuredHeight option and avoid truncation.

(edit: That was #4, but stackoverflow parsed it into a 1...)

Answer 3

Guys,

After about 8 hours of searching for a solution to what would seem to be such a simple issue I FINALLY stumbled on your posts here... Thankyou!!!

I have been stumbling around trying to get TextField to work and had no Joy, Label was fine, but limited formatting, and I need to be able to use embedded fonts and rotate. After reading the above this finally worked for me:

var myFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
myFormat.align = "center";
myFormat.font = "myFont";
myFormat.size = 14;
myFormat.color = 0xFFFFFF;

var newTxt:UITextField = new UITextField();
newTxt.text = "HELLO";
addChild(newTxt);
newTxt.validateNow();
newTxt.setTextFormat(myFormat);

The order of addChild before the final 2 steps was critical! (myFont is an embedded font I am using).

One again... a thousand thankyou's...

John