Creating A Custom Formatter - Adobe FLEX 2 - CREATING AND EXTENDING COMPONENTS Manual

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:
Formatter
all formatter classes
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 method.
format()
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 property
formatString
to pass a format pattern. Some Flex formatters, such as the NumberFormatter and
CurrencyFormatter classes, do not have properties, because they use a set of
formatString
properties to configure formatting.
208 Creating Custom Formatters