Creating and Extending Flex 2 Components > Creating Nonvisual Flex Components > Creating Custom Formatters > Creating a custom formatter

Creating a custom formatter

You create a custom formatter by creating a class that extends the mx.formatters.Formatter base class, or by creating a class that extends one of the standard formatter classes, which all extend mx.formatters.Formatter. The following example shows the class hierarchy for formatters:

Like standard formatter classes, your custom formatter class must contain a public format() method that takes a single argument and returns a String that contains the formatted data. Most of the processing of your custom formatter occurs within the format() method.

Your custom formatter also might let the user specify which pattern formats the data. Where applicable, the Flex formatters, such as the ZipCodeFormatter, use a formatString property to pass a format pattern. Some Flex formatters, such as the NumberFormatter and CurrencyFormatter classes, do not have formatString properties, because they use a set of properties to configure formatting.

Subtopics

Flex 2.01