Actionscript Cookbook

8.24. Selecting Text with ActionScript

Problem

You want to highlight a portion of the text within a text field.

Solution

Use the Selection.setSelection( ) method.

Discussion

The Selection class has a static method, setSelection( ), which highlights a portion of the text in the text field. The selection is applied to the text field that has focus (see Recipe 8.23). The setSelection( ) method takes two parameters:

startIndex

The beginning, zero-relative index of the text to highlight

endIndex

The index of the character after the text to highlight

For example:

myTextField.text = "this is some text";  // Set the text value.
Selection.setFocus("myTextField");       // Bring focus to the text field.
Selection.setSelection(0, 4);            // Highlight the word "this".

See Also

Recipe 8.25 and Recipe 8.26