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Calculating Text Width In ActionScript And Flex

Asked 2010-05-26T21:20:47.410
21

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.

apache-flex flash actionscript-3 air
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2 Answers

21

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.

answered 2010-05-26T21:53:15.973
1

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.

answered 2013-03-11T14:26:51.000

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