Length of a string in pixels

Question

I\'m populating a dropDownList with arrayCollection of strings. I want the width of the drop down list control to match with the size (in pixels) of the longest string in th

Answer 1

To get a more accurate measurement, you can populate a TextField with the string, then measure the width of that TextField's text.

Code:

function measureString(str:String, format:TextFormat):Rectangle {
    var textField:TextField = new TextField();
    textField.defaultTextFormat = format;
    textField.text = str;

    return new Rectangle(0, 0, textField.textWidth, textField.textHeight);
}

Usage:

var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
format.font = "Times New Roman";
format.size = 16;

var strings:Array = [ "a", "giraffe", "foo", "!" ];

var calculatedWidth:Number = 50;    // Set this to minimum width to start with

for each (var str:String in strings) {
    var stringWidth:Number = measureString(str, format).width;
    if (stringWidth > calculatedWidth) {
        calculatedWidth = stringWidth;
    }
}

trace(calculatedWidth);