Question

I have a text file(txt) in my web server. I will read the file contents and show it to user. The problem is that it does not show line separations and spaces the right way. Also i will need to activate possible links. For example if there is http://www.google.com then user can just click on the link and default browser opens it.

So far i have this:

var fileContents:String;

            try{

                var myLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
                myLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onFileLoaded);
                myLoader.load(new URLRequest("http://my.website.com/test.txt"));

                function onFileLoaded(e:Event):void
                {
                    fileContents = String(e.currentTarget.data);
                    var alertMessage = fileContents;

I have done this same thing in java, but I am not so familiar with ActionScript.

Java code:

URL url = new URL(getString(R.string.url));

                BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                        url.openStream(), "UTF-8"));
                StringBuilder total = new StringBuilder();
                String line;
                while ((line = r.readLine()) != null) {
                    total.append(line);
                    total.append(System.getProperty("line.separator"));

                }
                str = total.toString();
                r.close();

                return str;

Links in java:

final SpannableString s = new SpannableString(sUrl);
            Linkify.addLinks(s, Linkify.WEB_URLS);

Answer 1

You might consider using the Text Layout Framework (TLF) from Adobe. You can import the text as HTML and it will create clickable links for any URL’s found in the text. TLF is a bit unwieldy, but very powerful.

private var myTextFlow:TextFlow = TextConverter.importToFlow(sourceText, TextConverter.TEXT_FIELD_HTML_FORMAT);

If you are using Flex 4, can assign the resulting TextFlow object to one of the text components:

<s:RichText textFlow="{myTextFlow}" />

In an Actionscript project, you have to do a little more work to use the TextFlow. TLF uses an MVC approach. The TextFlow serves as the model, you can use a Sprite for the view, and a ContainerController as the controller:

private var container:Sprite = new Sprite();
addChild(container);
private var controller:ContainerController = new ContainerController(container, 800,600);
myTextFlow.flowComposer.addController(controller);
myTextFlow.flowComposer.updateAllControllers();