Text input in Air iOS with TLF

[josh_on]

I just asked this question here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/855971?tstart=0 but I think this might be a better forum for it.

I had just successfully published one of our projects on an iPod touch - and we were really impressed at how much worked straight away.  We were also impressed with the performance.  However one think that did not work was text input into a TLF field.  I published from a trial version of CS5.  When you tap in the input field (TLF) it gets a cursor - but no virtual keyboard is brought up - is there a special function that needs to be called?

[relaxatraja]

There is no special function to activate the native keyboard when it focused itz automatically get activated. Instead of TLF use with the classic text box and give it a try.

[marvin_blase]

yea, classic input textfields trigger the softkeyboard themselves. we had no success with TLFs but found some kinda workaround if TLF is really necessary:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/display/InteractiveObj...

[Joe ... Ward]

The InteractiveObject keyboard control APIs aren't supported on iOS, either.

[josh_on]

Thanks Joe,

Is there any timeframe for when this might be made to work?

We are trying to work out whether to build a native app or not.The cross platform promise of AIR is appealing - because we have an web application built in Flash using TLF for the input and display of user messages. When we exported it as an app we were pleasantly surprised to see that most things worked.  The display of messages was great - the performance was pretty good at first glance - but the TLF input not being available is pretty much a dead end for us.

We would have to rewrite a lot of things - for example we have loading bars as inlineGraphicElements in the input field as images are added. We may be able to emulate that with a textfield but because the output would have to be TLF it seriously complicates matters.

Other features we are looking for are push notifications and updating icons - is there any documentation for that - or if it doesn't exist is there a plan to make that available?

[Joe ... Ward]

Unfortunately, it is unsupported because of incompatibility between TLF and the text APIs available on iOS. So I can't say when or even whether it will be supported.

If, by "push notification" you mean the ability to to put a notification icon on the Android notification bar, then that should be available later this year. I'm not sure what you mean by update icon.

[josh_on]

Thanks,

That is very disappointing to hear. I think it would be worth making it work even if in a limited fashion. Not understanding what the problem actually is I can't really comment - but it doesn't sound insurmountable in theory. TextField is compatible - can you explain more about the incompatibility?

We have invested a lot of time into making TLF.

By push notification - I was talking about iOS:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificati...

The Notification Payload

Each push notification carries with it a payload. The payload specifies how users are to be alerted to the data waiting to be downloaded to the client application. The maximum size allowed for a notification payload is 256 bytes; Apple Push Notification Service refuses any notification that exceeds this limit. Remember that delivery of notifications is “best effort” and is not guaranteed.

For each notification, providers must compose a JSON dictionary object that strictly adheres to RFC 4627. This dictionary must contain another dictionary identified by the key aps. The aps dictionary contains one or more properties that specify the following actions:

An alert message to display to the user

A number to badge the application icon with

A sound to play

This may be something that we would have to do separatly from the app... Has anyone made a Flash App for iOS that also receives Push Notifications?  Do you just make this independently? Are there any compatability issues? (This should really be a different thread - I will research more first, but that is what I was referring to)

[Joe ... Ward]

I'm not privy to the implementation details, so I can't discuss the underlying areas of the incompatibility.

Yes, it looks like iOS push notification will be possible. Note that the feature being added later this year allows you to program the feature in Objective C (on iOS) and integrate that into your AIR application. Notification won't be a built-in feature, at least in the short term.

[josh_on]

OK Thanks,

is there somewhere that I can read more about this feature?  Will it be a specific feature for doing Push notifications or a general solution for integrating Native code for iOS into AIR for iOS

[josh_on]

It may being worked on: http://forums.adobe.com/message/3708388#3708388

[Joe ... Ward]

Unfortunately, using TLF for input fields is not supported on iOS yet.

[painschen]

import flash.display.Sprite;

import flash.display.Stage;

import flash.text.*;

import flash.events.*;

var myTextInput:TextField = new TextField();

myTextInput.type = TextFieldType.INPUT;

myTextInput.background = true;     

myTextInput.text = "Search..";

Object(root).addChild(myTextInput);

myTextInput.addEventListener(EVENT.CHANGE, inputEventCapture);

function inputEventCapture(event:Event):void{

    Object(root).myTLF.text = myTextInput.text;

}