I have a several chart components that I have created in Flex. Basically I have set up a special UI that allows the user to select which of these charts they want to print. When they press the print button each of the selected charts is created dynamically then added to a container. Then I send this container off to FlexPrintJob.
i.e.
private function prePrint():void
{
var printSelection:Box = new Box();
printSelection.percentHeight = 100;
printSelection.percentWidth = 100;
printSelection.visible = true;
if (this.chkMyChart1.selected)
{
var rptMyChart1:Chart1Panel = new Chart1Panel();
rptMyChart1.percentHeight = 100;
rptMyChart1.percentWidth = 100;
rptMyChart1.visible = true;
printSelection.addChild(rptMyChart1);
}
print(printSelection);
}
private function print(container:Box):void
{
var job:FlexPrintJob;
job = new FlexPrintJob();
if (job.start()) {
job.addObject(container, FlexPrintJobScaleType.MATCH_WIDTH);
job.send();
}
}
This code works fine if the chart is actually displayed somewhere on the page but adding it dynamically as shown above does not. The print dialog will appear but nothing happens when I press OK.
So I really have two questions:
Is it possible to print flex components/charts when they are not visible on the screen?
If so, how do I do it / what am I doing wrong?
UPDATE:
Well, at least one thing wrong is my use of the percentages in the width and height. Using percentages doesn't really make sense when the Box is not contained in another object. Changing the height and width to fixed values actually allows the printing to progress and solves my initial problem.
printSelection.height = 100;
printSelection.width = 100;
But a new problem arises in that instead of seeing my chart, I see a black box instead. I have previously resolved this issue by setting the background colour of the chart to #FFFFFF but this doesn't seem to be working this time.
UPDATE 2:
I have seen some examples on the adobe site that add the container to the application but don't include it in the layout. This looks like the way to go.
i.e.
printSelection.includeInLayout = false;
addChild(printSelection);
Your component has to be on the stage in order to draw its contents, so you should try something like this:
printSelection.visible = false;
application.addChild(printSelection);
printSelection.width = ..;
printSelection.height = ...;
...
then do the printing
i'm not completely sure, but in one of my application I have to print out a complete Tab Navigator and the only method i have found to print it is to automatically scroll the tabnavigator tab in order to show the component on screen when i add them to the printjob.
In this way they are all printed. Before i created the tabnaviagotr scrolling the print (to PDF) result was a file with all the pages of the tab but only the one visible on screen really printed.
Related
I have a couple of OptionGroups with very long captions that run across the width of the page, which looks very bad. I tried restricting the width of the OptionGroup using setWidth and via CSS, and also tried restricting the width of the parent container; all without effect.
So I made a grid layout with an option group in the first column (spanning all rows), and individual labels for the captions in the second column (one per row). However, in case the captions span multiple lines (which they do in my case), this leads to the radio buttons / checkboxes no longer being aligned to the captions. (Regrettably, I'm not allowed to post images.) For instance,
(o) This is a multiline
(o) caption
This is another multiline
caption
I resolved this by creating one OptionGroup per label, and adding each option group in the first column:
(o) This is a multiline
caption
(o) This is another multiline
caption
Clearly, in case of radio buttons, this means multiple buttons can be selected at the same time, since they are no longer linked via a single OptionGroup. Therefore, I registered listeners which, each time a button is selected, de-select all other buttons. And this brings me to my problem; since this "unchecking" is done at the server side, there will unavoidably be some lag, meaning that for some time, multiple radio buttons will appear selected at the client side.
Any ideas on how to resolve this? I only started working with Vaadin recently, so I'm far from an expert. Is there some simple way of restricting the caption width (some magical undocumented CSS class), or do I need to extend / adapt the client-side widget implementation?
Thanks,
William
What you need is FlexibleOptionGroup add-on.
Here is an example implementation:
#Override
protected void init(VaadinRequest request) {
Container cont = new IndexedContainer();
cont.addContainerProperty("caption", String.class, "");
// very long strings in the following setValue() methods
cont.getContainerProperty(cont.addItem(), "caption").setValue("I have...");
cont.getContainerProperty(cont.addItem(), "caption").setValue("So I ma...");
FlexibleOptionGroup fog = new FlexibleOptionGroup(cont);
fog.setCaption("FlexibleOptionGroup:");
fog.setItemCaptionPropertyId("caption");
fog.setMultiSelect(true); // force using CheckBoxes
VerticalLayout fogLayout = new VerticalLayout();
Iterator<FlexibleOptionGroupItemComponent> iter;
iter = fog.getItemComponentIterator();
while(iter.hasNext()) {
// OptionGroupItem part (CheckBox or RadioButton)
FlexibleOptionGroupItemComponent fogItemComponent = iter.next();
// CustomComponent part
Label caption = new Label(fogItemComponent.getCaption());
caption.setWidth(400, Unit.PIXELS);
fogLayout.addComponent(new HorizontalLayout(fogItemComponent, caption));
}
setContent(fogLayout);
}
The above code produces:
I got a problem with the widths of the advanceddatagrid-columns.
First of all, my layout is a HDividedBox, on the left there is the navigation, on the right there is a module, containing the advanceddatagrid.
left Side: navigation
right side: module (e.g. advanceddatagrid)
Most of the columns got a fixed width, some a minWidth. Now, initially the widths of the columns are correct.
So the problem is, whenever I load a new module and later reload the advanceddatagrid, the initial width of the columns is way different, although I change nothing in the process of loading the module. Neither the fixed widths nor the minWidths are initially correct.
I recently saw there is a solution for wrong widths of colums, it looks like that:
var oldPolicy:String = advanceddatagrid.myScrollPolicy;
advanceddatagrid.myScrollPolicy = ScrollPolicy.ON;
for(var i:int = 0; i < advanceddatagrid.columns.length; i++) {
var column:AdvancedDataGridColumn = advanceddatagrid.columns[i] as AdvancedDataGridColumn;
advanceddatagrid.column.width = column.width;
}
advanceddatagrid.validateNow();
advanceddatagrid.myScrollPolicy = oldPolicy;
advanceddatagrid.validateNow();
On the whole this is just a temporary change of the ScrollPolicy, re-setting the column-widths and then changing back. But still, it doenst work.
Does anyone have a clue?
Some relevant references that might help (the first one worked for me):
http://userflex.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/force-resize-datagrid/
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4285461
To summarize the first post (credit goes to Nick Schneble):
public function resizeColumns () : void
{
grid.validateNow ();
// forces the columns to size themselves properly
for each (var column : AdvancedDataGridColumn in grid.columns)
{
column.width = column.width;
}
}
It may seem a bit ridiculous, but if you execute this method whenever the underlying data in your data grid changes, you’ll have beautifully laid out columns.
I have a RichEditiableText component in a Flex 4.5 project and I want to print its contents. The problem I'm having is that component is holding a TextFlow and the copy is being clipped at the beginning/ending of pages. I can't seem to get it to respect the page breaks consistently.
I have this piece of code that adjusts the scroll position of the the RichEditableText component in a loop. Is there a better/smarter way to do this so that I ensure the text breaks to a new page appropriately?
if(richEditTextComponent.contentHeight <= printJob.pageHeight) {
printJob.addObject(richEditTextComponent, FlexPrintJobScaleType.NONE);
} else {
var max:Number = richEditTextComponent.contentHeight;
var i:Number = 0;
while(i<max) {
printJob.addObject(richEditTextComponent, FlexPrintJobScaleType.NONE);
richEditTextComponent.verticalScrollPosition += printJob.pageHeight;
i+=printJob.pageHeight;
}
}
Just for anyone else that has this problem...I ended up simply passing the copy to Javascript to handle printing. Turns out TLF is pretty cumbersome for type of thing.
I need to find a way to "upsample" text from 72dpi (screen) to 300dpi (print) for rendered client generated text. This is a true WYSIWYG application and we're expecting a ton of traffic so client side rendering is a requirement. Our application has several fonts, font sizes, colors, alignments the user can modify in a textarea. The question is how to convert 72dpi to 300dpi. We have the editior complete, we just need to make 300dpi versions of the textarea.
MY IDEA
1) Get textarea and increase the height, width, and font size by 300/72. (if ints are needed on font size I may need to increase the font then down-sample to the height/width)
2) use BitmapUtil.getSnapshot on the textarea to get a rendered version of the text
THE QUESTION
How can I render text inside of a textarea without the component lifecycle? Imagine:
var textArea:TextArea = new TextArea();
textArea.text = "This is a test";
var bmd:BitmapData = textArea.render();
Like Flextras said, width/height has nothing to do with DPI, unless you actually zoom into the application by 4.16X. If your application all has vector based graphics, it shouldn't be a problem. Plus, the concept of DPI is lost in any web application until you're trying to save/print a bitmap.
It's definitely possible, but you'll have to figure it on your own.
To ask a question another way, it is possible to create a TextArea in
memory which I can use the BitmapUtil.getSnapshot() function to
generate a BitmapData object
Technically, all components are in memory. What you want to do, I believe, is render a component without adding it to a container.
We do exactly this for the watermark on Flextras components. Conceptually we created a method to render the instance; like this:
public function render(argInheritingStyles : Object):void{
this.createChildren();
this.childrenCreated();
this.initializationComplete();
this.inheritingStyles = argInheritingStyles;
this.commitProperties();
this.measure();
this.height = this.measuredHeight;
this.width = this.measuredWidth;
this.updateDisplayList(this.unscaledWidth,this.unscaledHeight);
}
The method must be explicitly called. Then you can use the 'standard' procedure for turning the component into a bitmap. I think we use a Label; but the same approach should work on any given component.
Here is the final method I used to solve the problem of creating a printable version of the text and style of a Spark TextArea component. I ended up placing the custom component TextAreaRenderer (see below) in the MXML and setting the visibility to false. Then using the reference to this component to process any text field (renderObject) and get back a BitmapData object.
public class TextAreaRenderer extends TextArea implements IAssetRenderer
{
public function render(renderObject:Object, dpi:int = 300):BitmapData{
// CAST THE OBJECT
//.................
var userTextArea:TextArea = TextArea(renderObject);
// SCALE IS THE DIVISION OF THE NEW DPI OVER THE SCREEN DPI 72
//............................................................
var scale:Number = dpi / 72;
// COPY THE USER'S TEXT AREA INTO THE OFFSCREEN TEXT AREA
//.......................................................
this.text = userTextArea.text; // the actual text
this.height = Math.floor(userTextArea.height * scale); // scaled height
this.width = Math.floor(userTextArea.width * scale); // scaled width
// GET THE LAYOUT FORMATS AND COPY TO OFFSCREEN
// - the user's format = userTextAreaLayoutFormat
// - the hidden format = thisLayoutFormat
//...............................................
var editableLayoutProperties:Array = ['fontSize', 'fontFamily', 'fontWeight', 'fontStyle', 'textAlign', 'textDecoration', 'color']
userTextArea.selectAll();
var userTextAreaLayoutFormat:TextLayoutFormat = userTextArea.getFormatOfRange();
this.selectAll();
var thisLayoutFormat:TextLayoutFormat = this.getFormatOfRange();
for each(var prop:String in editableLayoutProperties){
thisLayoutFormat[prop] = userTextAreaLayoutFormat[prop];
}
// SCALE THE FONT SIZE
//....................
thisLayoutFormat.fontSize = thisLayoutFormat.fontSize * scale;
// SET THE FORMAT BACK IN THE TEXT BOX
//...................................
this.setFormatOfRange(thisLayoutFormat);
// REDRAW THE OFFSCREEN
// RETURN THE BITMAP DATA
//.......................
this.validateNow();
return BitmapUtil.getSnapshot(this);
}
}
Then calling the TextAreaRenderer after the text area is changed to get a scaled up bitmap.
// COPY THE DATA INTO THE OFFSCREEN COMPONENT
//............................................
var renderableComponent:IAssetRenderer = view.offScreenTextArea;
return renderableComponent.render(userTextArea, 300);
Thanks to the advice from www.Flextras.com for working through the issue with me.
I have a spark skinnable component which contains a datagroup with images. The datagroup is scrolled by hovering the mouse over it. Everything works fine except one thing: after I change the datagroup provider, I need to scroll down automatically. The problem is the images are not loaded immediately after I set the provider so (contentHeight - height) does not yet represent the actual maximum scrolling position. Is there an easy way of telling the datagroup to scroll down as its content loads? Because the workaround seems to be not so straightforward.
This is the code for scrolling(thumbnailStrip is my datagroup):
private function thumbnailStrip_mouseMoveHandler(evt:MouseEvent):void {
var fr:Number = (thumbnailStrip.contentHeight - thumbnailStrip.height) / thumbnailStrip.height;
var scroll:Number = fr * evt.stageY - fr * this.y;
var ms:Number = maxScroll();
if(scroll > ms) scroll = ms;
thumbnailStrip.verticalScrollPosition = scroll;
}
private function maxScroll():Number {
return thumbnailStrip.contentHeight - thumbnailStrip.height;
}
Thanks,
Calin
thumbnailStrip.layout.verticalScrollPosition += thumbnailStrip.layout.getVerticalScrollPositionDelta(NavigationUnit.END);
This may have to run a few times to get all the way to the bottom.It's supposed to return the difference between the current scroll position and the "end" of the scroll position. As things load, I'd just keep calling this in a "callLater".
btw, there's a bug for this: http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-25740 not sure if it's fixed in 4.5, ugly workaround here: http://flexponential.com/2011/02/13/scrolling-to-the-bottom-of-a-spark-list/