Stefan B.log

Long time ago I’ve created a custom search ComboBox in Java Swing for an enterprise application. Exploring the Flex framework I tried to find the same kind of ComboBox component. First place to look for special components is probably the flexlib, another good resource is Flex Examples. I was not lucky, so I searched the Web - here’s what I found:

• adobe.com
• websector.de
• hillelcoren.com
• defusion.org.uk
• flex888.com

Demo

Ok, a lot of cool stuff, especially the Autocomplete TextInput component, but not exactly what I was looking for. Anyway, I thought it’s a nice exercise to see how easy or difficult it is to customize a Flex Combobox (btw, in Swing it was not easy at all ) and this is my result so far:

You can get the source from here, but please be careful - the component was not heavily tested and so far not used in any application.

Open issues

• Actually it’s a non-editable combobox, but it still looks like an editable combobox. I’ve tried to fix this by switching from non-editable to editable and back on the fly via an approach more or less like this:

  override protected function focusInHandler(event:FocusEvent):void {
          editable = true;
          super.focusInHandler(event);
  }
   
  override protected function focusOutHandler(event:FocusEvent):void {
          editable = false;
          super.focusOutHandler(event);
  }

  But unfortunately it’s not that easy. I run into several problems and fixing one issue was causing another. Maybe it’s a better idea to change the skin dynamically, but I’m not sure if this is the way to go.

• Setting the prompt property is not working correctly.
• Start editing in the input field will open the dropdown list, but when you resize the window so the dropdown list will close the dropdown list will stay invisible (see bug issue)

Flex 4

I’m sure there are more open issues, but maybe the code is a good starting point - or should we rather wait for FxComboBox in Flex 4 - Gumbo (to be continued…).