Question

Is there a way to apply, say, a DropShadowFilter to the text within a TextInput component in Flex 3 without affecting the component itself?

Answer 1

Actually, your mx.controls.TextInput does have a member called textField of type IUITextField, but it is protected, so it can’t be accessed directly from other classes.
You can view the source code for it in your Flex SDK under /frameworks/projects/mx/src/mx/controls/TextInput.as.

In order to modify this member, you can still do one of two things:

1. Create a class that extends mx.controls.TextInput. Subclasses can access protected members, so you should be able to add your DropShadowFilter, probably best by overriding the updateDisplayList method.

2. Use the display list:

   for (var i:int = 0; i < myTextInput.numChildren; i++) {
       var child:DisplayObject = myTextInput.getChildAt(i);
       if (child is IUITextField) doStuffToTextField(child);
   }