Question

I am creating a textbutton using actionscript.
the code is given below.

public function createTextButton(parentId){
            var mytext:TextField = new TextField();
            mytext.x = 478;
            mytext.y = 225;
            mytext.height = 20;
            var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
            format.font = "Hitchcock";
            format.size = 20;
            mytext.defaultTextFormat = format; 
            mytext.textColor =  0xffffff;
            mytext.htmlText = '<a href="j#" >Click Here</a>';

            mytext.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,paginationLinkClicked);
            mytext.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER,mouseOverButton);
            mytext.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT,mouseOutButton);
            parentId.addChild(mytext);  
        }

Now i want the click event of this button to be handled in my event handler function only. It should not navigate away to the ‘href’ source given upon clicking.
How can i achieve that.

Answer 1

Add event.preventDefault(); in your event handler once you’ve finished your custom handling.

From the adobe docs: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/events/Event.html

flash.events.Event.preventDefault(): Cancels an event’s default behavior if that behavior can be canceled.

---

Update:

preventDefault won’t work in this case.

You’ll need to add a link event handler and prefix the url with event:. Here’s a simplified version of your code:

public function createTextButton(event:Event):void
{
    myText.htmlText = '<a href="event:j#">Click Here</a>';
    myText.addEventListener(TextEvent.LINK, handle_linkClick);
}

protected function handle_linkClick(event:TextEvent):void
{
    var linkText:String = event.text; // Will give you everything after `event:`. In your case: "j#"
    // Custom code goes here....
}

TextArea docs on the link event handler:

Dispatched when a user clicks a
hyperlink in text defined by the
htmlText property, where the URL
begins with “event:”. The remainder of
the URL after “event:” is placed in
the text property of the link event
object.

When you handle the link event, the
hyperlink is not automatically
executed; you need to execute the
hyperlink from within your event
handler. You typically use the
navigateToURL() method to execute the
hyperlink. This allows you to modify
the hyperlink, or even prohibit it
from occurring, in your application.