Copy TextField text to System clipboard | Actionscript (AS2 + AS3) Tutorial

November 12, 2008 • 5,207 views

Overview

Integrating the clipboard of the operating system with your flash projects is sometimes essential. It’s a very simple and boils down to one basic method… System.setClipboard(). I’ve found a couple other things help the user experience though, such as selecting the text that gets copied and giving the user some sort of feedback to let them know that the text was successfully copied. Here’s a simple way to do it. Have any suggestions to make it better?

I’ve included an as2 version as well as as3. I’ve promised myself to migrate to as3, so I’m not coding anything in 2 that I don’t do in 3 also. This was to discourage me from coding in as2 and to encourage me to code as3, but also let me learn by doing it in both to see the actual differences if I was stuck doing a project in as2. I figured this could help others see the differences between the two versions of actionscript a bit easier and make their own migration as well!

Steps

copy to OS clipboard = System.setClipboard(”Text to COPY”) of System.setClipboard(textBoxToCopy.text)
set selection to text that is copied
give user feedback

Examples and Source

AS2

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textBox.textBox.text = "Click this text box to copy the text or click the COPY button below. You will see feedback to the user and this text copied to your clipboard!\n\n"+

'copyButton.onRelease = textBox.onPress = function(){\n\tSelection.setFocus("textBox");\n\tSelection.setSelection(0, textBox.text.length);\n\tSystem.setClipboard(textBox.text);\n\ttrace("copied: "+textBox.text);\n\tfeedback("Text Copied!");\n}';

copyButton.onRelease = textBox.onPress = function(){

  Selection.setFocus("textBox.textBox");

    Selection.setSelection(0, textBox.textBox.text.length); 

  System.setClipboard(textBox.textBox.text);

  trace("copied: "+textBox.textBox.text);

  textFeedback("Text Copied!");

}

function textFeedback(theFeedback:String){

  feedback.text = theFeedback;

  setTimeout(function(){feedback.text="";}, 1200);

}

AS3

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textBox.text = "Click this text box to copy the text or click the COPY button below. You will see feedback to the user and this text copied to your clipboard!\n\n"+

'function copyText(e:MouseEvent):void{\n\ttextBox.setSelection(0, textBox.text.length)\n\tSystem.setClipboard(textBox.text);\n\ttrace("copied: "+textBox.text);\n\ttextFeedback("Text Copied!");\n}';

//set it so the textBox selection will show even when textBox has no focus

textBox.alwaysShowSelection = true;

textBox.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, copyText);

copyButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, copyText);

function copyText(e:MouseEvent):void{

  textBox.setSelection(0, textBox.text.length)

  System.setClipboard(textBox.text);

  trace("copied: "+textBox.text);

  textFeedback("Text Copied!");

}

function textFeedback(theFeedback:String):void {

  feedback.text = theFeedback;

  setTimeout(function(){feedback.text="";}, 1200);

}