Actionscript 2.0 and 3.0: Specific "text" in input box causes certain image to display

Question

I want to know how(and what scripts) to take words from a text input box and cause it to display and image Ex: if the text box said "smiley face" in it, then the image "smiley_face.jpg" would display on a certain movieclip and can be dragged around the stage and when a new image is loaded, it doesn't replace the previous image on the movie clip.

Answer 1

You need to listen for the textInput event and you need to constantly search for "smile" using something like the search() function(u can use strings or regular expressions).

It returns -1 if the string you're searching for wasn't found, otherwise it returns the first index where the searched string was found.

Here's a really basic example:

var ti:TextField = new TextField();
ti.type = TextFieldType.INPUT;
ti.border = true;
addChild(ti);
ti.addEventListener(TextEvent.TEXT_INPUT, onInput);

function onInput(event:TextEvent):void {
    if(ti.text.search('smile')!=-1) trace('display smiley image');
}

You did mention smileys, so depending on your level of comfort with actionscript 3, it might be also worth having a look at Thibault Imbert's SmileyRenderer. Careful it uses the new FTE so you need to use Flash Player 10, etc.

Answer 2

yeah. In ActionScript you need to add a listener event to the text field. then you can do something like this. My action script is not so good so I will just stick with logic.

 if listener.text == "smile"
    smile.jpg
 else if listener.text == "frown"
    frown.jpg
 else
    default.jpg
 end

You should check out lynda.com for their basic AS screencasts