Category Archives: string manipulation

TextLineMetrics

By Zevan | April 23, 2010
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var word:String = "TextLineMetrics are useful";
  2. var letters:Array = word.split("");
  3.  
  4. var pre:TextField;
  5. for (var i:int = 0; i<letters.length; i++){
  6.     var t:TextField = new TextField();
  7.     t.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat("Arial", 40);
  8.     t.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
  9.     t.textColor = int(Math.random() * 0xFFFFFF);
  10.     t.text = letters[i];
  11.     if (pre){
  12.         var metrics:TextLineMetrics = pre.getLineMetrics(0);
  13.         t.x = metrics.width + pre.x;
  14.     }
  15.     pre = t;
  16.     addChild(t);
  17. }

Sometimes you need to do something to a TextField one letter at a time. One way to do this is to create a separate TextField for each letter and position them based on the TextLineMetrics object. This snippet creates textFields for a string and colors each TextField randomly.

Also posted in strings | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

URLVariables Replacement

By Zevan | March 8, 2010
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. function decode(str:String):Object {
  2.     var vars:Object={};
  3.     var parse:Array =str.split("&");
  4.     var i:int=0;
  5.     for (i = 0; i<parse.length; i++) {
  6.         var pair:Array=parse[i].split("=");
  7.         if (pair.length==2) {
  8.             vars[pair[0]]=pair[1];
  9.         }
  10.     }
  11.     return vars;
  12. }
  13.  
  14. var nameValuePairs="one=1&&two=éllo&three=1000&four=0xFF0000";
  15. var parsed:Object=decode(nameValuePairs);
  16.  
  17. trace(parsed.one);
  18. trace(parsed.two);
  19. trace(parsed.three);
  20. trace(parsed.four);
  21.  
  22. /*outputs:
  23. 1
  24. éllo
  25. 1000
  26. 0xFF0000
  27. */

Well not exactly a URLVariables replacement, but I often use the URLVariables.decode() function and find that its very picky... like if there is an extra & or something it freaks out and breaks, or if there are line returns. As a quick and simple solution the other day I wrote this function into part of a class (Model class) that I was working on. Fixed the problem and even handles Spanish characters nicely.

There is plenty of room for improvement with this simple function... feel free to post improvements in the comments.

Also posted in external data, strings | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

ActionScript Eval (well, not really)

By Zevan | October 3, 2009
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var txt:TextField = TextField(addChild(new TextField()));
  2. txt.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
  3.  
  4. var myVar:Number = 100;
  5. // works as an expression parser
  6. txt.text = js("return (" + myVar + " * 2 + 10) / 2");
  7. txt.appendText("\n\n");
  8.  
  9. // parses javascript
  10. txt.appendText(js("var a = []; for (var i = 0; i<10; i++){ a.push(i) } return a;"));
  11.  
  12. function js( data:String ):*{
  13.    var res:*= ExternalInterface.call("function(){" + data + "}");
  14.    return (res == null) ? "null" : res;
  15. }

This one made my day - CAN'T believe I never thought of it before... haven't done any speed tests yet... but it shows how to use ExternalInterface.call to parse math expressions and javascript code. This will only work when the swf is shown in an html page of course... so if your in flash cmd+f12...

I got the idea from this code snippet... which actually has an error in it... the decode() function should not return void... I found that snippet thanks to this tweet by makc3d.

Also posted in Math, external data, functions, misc, strings | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

base32 Twitter Coordinates

By Zevan | August 5, 2009
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. [SWF(width = 800, height=700, frameRate=30, backgroundColor=0x000000)]
  2. var canvas:BitmapData = new BitmapData(1000,800,false, 0x000000);
  3. addChild(new Bitmap(canvas));
  4.  
  5. var coords:String ="";
  6. var index:int = 0;
  7. addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop);
  8.  
  9. var s:Shape = new Shape();
  10. with (s.graphics) beginFill(0xFFFFFF, 0.3), drawCircle(4,4,4)
  11. var brush:BitmapData = new BitmapData(10,10, true, 0x00000000);
  12. brush.draw(s);
  13.  
  14. var pnt:Point = new Point();
  15. function onLoop(evt:Event):void {
  16.      if (coords.length> 0){
  17.          for (var i:int = 0; i<100;i++){
  18.              if (index <coords.length){
  19.                  pnt.x+= 0.2;
  20.                  pnt.y = parseInt(coords.substr(index,3), 32) / 2;
  21.                  index+=3;
  22.                  canvas.copyPixels(brush, brush.rect, pnt, null, null, true);
  23.              }else{
  24.                 break;
  25.                 removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop);
  26.              }
  27.          }
  28.      }
  29. }
  30.  
  31. var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
  32. var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom");
  33. var vars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
  34. vars.q = "as3, flash";
  35. vars.rpp = "100";
  36. vars.page = 1;
  37. vars.lang = "en";
  38. req.data = vars;
  39. req.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
  40. loader.load(req);
  41. loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded);
  42. function onLoaded(evt:Event):void{
  43.     var searchData:XML = new XML(loader.data);
  44.     var atom:Namespace = searchData.namespace("");
  45.     default xml namespace = atom;
  46.     var titles:String = "";
  47.     for each(var entry:XML in searchData.entry){
  48.         titles += entry.title.toString();
  49.     }
  50.     var index:int = 0;
  51.     var words:Array = titles.split(" ");
  52.     words.sort();
  53.     for (var i:int = 0; i<words.length; i++){
  54.         if (words[i].match(/RT|\@|\#|http/g).length == 0){
  55.             var word:String = words[i].replace(/[\W]/g, "");
  56.             if (word.length> 1){
  57.                 coords += word + " ";
  58.             }
  59.         }
  60.     }
  61. }

This snippet does a twitter search and sorts the results alphabetically. It then reads through the results 3 characters at a time - each set of 3 characters is converted to base32 and then used a y coordinate on a plot.

In order for the swf to be worth looking at, I think I'd need to add an input field. I may do that later... but for now here are a few stills:

Also posted in BitmapData, external data, strings | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments