I'm creating the Label component like this
var label:Label = new Label();
label.text = "some text";
label.styleName = "someStyle";
addChild(label);
But it stay invisible until I explicit set the width and height.
How can I make the label to be auto resized according to it's text?
I've found the answer to my question here
The solution is to call a measureText() function for the label
var lineMetrics:TextLineMetrics = label.measureText(label.text);
label.width = lineMetrics.width;
label.height = lineMetrics.height;
I've also noticed the above answer doesn't seem to work with spark components. This does however work for me.
label.width = label.measuredWidth;
label.height = label.measuredHeight;
You should be able to use label.percentWidth = 100; to allow the label to automatically grow with the text. If you want it to stay on a single line, you'll also want to set the maxDisplayedLines = 1; property as well.
You may also want to use addElement(label) instead of addChild(label).
Related
var s : SpriteVisualElement = new SpriteVisualElement();
s.graphics.beginFill( 0xFFFF00 );
s.graphics.drawRect( 0, 0, 100, 20 );
s.graphics.endFill();
s.width = 100;
s.height = 20;
this.addElement( s ) ;
var l : Label = new Label();
l.text = "text";
l.width = s.width;
l.height = s.height;
s.addChild( l );
The follow code seems not to working ( Flex 4.5 ).
What could cause this issue, and how to fix it ?
It's not being displayed because you're not adding Label (which is a UIComponent and works with the component lifecycle) to another UIComponent that will actually instantiate it properly. Your SpriteVisualElement is not made to have UIComponents within it, it's made to have sprites which can draw itself. Label is waiting for 'invalidateDisplayList' to be called so that it can draw itself.
Either do a force draw or use a UIComponent as the container for Label.
The Spark Label is not a container; and therefore does not have an addElement method. I assume you're getting a compile error because of this [but you didn't tell us what your problem was].
You can wrap the label up in a container, such as a Group or SkinnableContainer and use your extra visual element as a child of the same group.
Or you could try the addChild method of the Label. It's odd to try to add Children to a component, such as Label, that is not intended as a container, though.
I'm trying to calculate how WIDE to make my button, based on the text that it will contain, and when I try to google for how to calcuate something as simplistic as the WIDTH OF SOME TEXT, I go cross-eyed just trying to wade through apparently nonsensical esoteric counter-intuitive voodoo. Can anyone out there help simplify for me how I would write a function like this:
public function HowWideWouldThisTextBeIfItWereInThisButton(Text:String,Container:Button):int {
...
}
Thanks in advance.
So long as you're in a UIComponent, you can use the measureText function.
public function howWideWouldThisTextBeIfItWereInThisButton(text:String,container:Button):int {
var lineMetrics:TextLineMetrics = container.measureText(text);
return lineMetrics.width;
}
That being said, the flex button component should automatically size to the width of the text, if you don't set a width on it. That way if you need the text width, you can just call use the textWidth property.
This works any format, size, font type. Don't forget properties "autoSize" and "wordWrap"!
var tf:TextField = new TextField();
addChild(tf);
tf.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
tf.wordWrap = false;
tf.text = "Whatever here";
tf.width = tf.textWidth + 4; // add 2 pixels-gutters left & right
Your button will need to be "tf.width" wide...
Here's how you do it in Spark:
I've modified - simplified - his example a bit here:
var textMetrics:TextLineMetrics = label.measureText( label.text );
var textWidth:int = textMetrics.width;
Here's a way that works also:
var tempText:Text = new Text();
tempText.regenerateStyleCache(false);
var textWidth:int = tempText.measureText(*yourstring*).width;
as I think, textField.textWidth construction works fine... until you change the font size.
It seems it calculates width based on 12px font.
So, if you have embedded font and global styling you can try fast solution:
var realWidth = myLabel.textField.textWidth * (fontSize / 12);
I've tried this on long and short strings and the result is correct.
Joshua, it really helps to be clear. Are you talking TextField, MX Label, Spark Label, RichText, etc? Different text components use different text engines, such as FTE and TLF and may have different solutions. I certainly wish Adobe had a good set of utilities or sample code which could predict what the size of font rendered onto the controls would be, before you actually do it. But, the good news is that in certain cases - like, a good old fashioned TextField, you can predict this pretty well. You just make a TextField, set it's textFormat field, auto size method and the text. You should be able to get it's size before adding it anywhere. I don't remember what the order was, but, I remember the order you set those properties matters. If you can't figure out how to do it, I can provide a code example. Now, for the new, "improved", components such as Spark Labels - I'll be buggered if I can find a damn way... spent a number of hours on this and haven't found a way.. or someone who knows a way :P.
Following up my comment on quoo's answer, here's the code for same purpose, but just grabbing the width out of a TextField, using TextLineMetrics as well:
public function mtxtWidth(container:TextField):int {
var lineMetrics:TextLineMetrics = container.getLineMetrics(0);
return lineMetrics.width;
}
Sounds like you could use textWidth
var viewStack:ViewStack = new ViewStack();
viewStack.percentWidth = 100;
viewStack.percentHeight = 100;
viewStack.addChild(canVas1);
viewStack.addChild(canVas2);
viewStack.addChild(canVas3);
lb = new LinkBar();
lb.dataProvider=viewStack;
Its only displaying canVas3 contents not canVas1 and canVas2
thanks
I think that's what it's supposed to do. It just puts components one on top of the other like a deck of cards, with the topmost (last added) being visible. Check this out.
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):
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.
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
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));
}
}
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
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
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:
TextField is styled using the TextFormat definition, and applying it to the textfield. As Bryan said, order matters.
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)
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.
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...)
I've implemented a custom item renderer that I'm using with a combobox on a flex project I'm working on. It displays and icon and some text for each item. The only problem is that when the text is long the width of the menu is not being adjusted properly and the text is being truncated when displayed. I've tried tweaking all of the obvious properties to alleviate this problem but have not had any success. Does anyone know how to make the combobox menu width scale appropriately to whatever data it's rendering?
My custom item renderer implementation is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:HBox xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
styleName="plain" horizontalScrollPolicy="off">
<mx:Image source="{data.icon}" />
<mx:Label text="{data.label}" fontSize="11" fontWeight="bold" truncateToFit="false"/>
</mx:HBox>
And my combobox uses it like so:
<mx:ComboBox id="quicklinksMenu" change="quicklinkHandler(quicklinksMenu.selectedItem.data);" click="event.stopImmediatePropagation();" itemRenderer="renderers.QuickLinkItemRenderer" width="100%"/>
EDIT:
I should clarify on thing: I can set the dropdownWidth property on the combobox to some arbitrarily large value - this will make everything fit, but it will be too wide. Since the data being displayed in this combobox is generic, I want it to automatically size itself to the largest element in the dataprovider (the flex documentation says it will do this, but I have the feeling my custom item renderer is somehow breaking that behavior)
Just a random thought (no clue if this will help):
Try setting the parent HBox and the Label's widths to 100%. That's generally fixed any problems I've run into that were similar.
Have you tried using the calculatePreferredSizeFromData() method?
protected override function calculatePreferredSizeFromData(count:int):Object
This answer is probably too late, but I had a very similar problem with the DataGrid's column widths.
After much noodling, I decided to pre-render my text in a private TextField, get the width of the rendered text from that, and explicitly set the width of the column on all of the appropriate resize type events. A little hack-y but works well enough if you haven't got a lot of changing data.
You would need to do two things:
for the text, use mx.controls.Text (that supports text wrapping) instead of mx.controls.Label
set comboBox's dropdownFactory.variableRowHeight=true -- this dropdownFactory is normally a subclass of List, and the itemRenderer you are setting on ComboBox is what will be used to render each item in the list
And, do not explicitly set comboBox.dropdownWidth -- let the default value of comboBox.width be used as dropdown width.
If you look at the measure method of mx.controls.ComboBase, you'll see that the the comboBox calculates it's measuredMinWidth as a sum of the width of the text and the width of the comboBox button.
// Text fields have 4 pixels of white space added to each side
// by the player, so fudge this amount.
// If we don't have any data, measure a single space char for defaults
if (collection && collection.length > 0)
{
var prefSize:Object = calculatePreferredSizeFromData(collection.length);
var bm:EdgeMetrics = borderMetrics;
var textWidth:Number = prefSize.width + bm.left + bm.right + 8;
var textHeight:Number = prefSize.height + bm.top + bm.bottom
+ UITextField.TEXT_HEIGHT_PADDING;
measuredMinWidth = measuredWidth = textWidth + buttonWidth;
measuredMinHeight = measuredHeight = Math.max(textHeight, buttonHeight);
}
The calculatePreferredSizeFromData method mentioned by #defmeta (implemented in mx.controls.ComboBox) assumes that the data renderer is just a text field, and uses flash.text.lineMetrics to calculate the text width from label field in the data object. If you want to add an additional visual element to the item renderer and have the ComboBox take it's size into account when calculating it's own size, you will have to extend the mx.controls.ComboBox class and override the calculatePreferredSizeFromData method like so:
override protected function calculatePreferredSizeFromData(count:int):Object
{
var prefSize:Object = super.calculatePrefferedSizeFromData(count);
var maxW:Number = 0;
var maxH:Number = 0;
var bookmark:CursorBookmark = iterator ? iterator.bookmark : null;
var more:Boolean = iterator != null;
for ( var i:int = 0 ; i < count ; i++)
{
var data:Object;
if (more) data = iterator ? iterator.current : null;
else data = null;
if(data)
{
var imgH:Number;
var imgW:Number;
//calculate the image height and width using the data object here
maxH = Math.max(maxH, prefSize.height + imgH);
maxW = Math.max(maxW, prefSize.width + imgW);
}
if(iterator) iterator.moveNext();
}
if(iterator) iterator.seek(bookmark, 0);
return {width: maxW, height: maxH};
}
If possible store the image dimensions in the data object and use those values as imgH and imgW, that will make sizing much easier.
EDIT:
If you are adding elements to the render besides an image, like a label, you will also have to calculate their size as well when you iterate through the data elements and take those dimensions into account when calculating maxH and maxW.