Working with List-based components

The List, DataGrid, and TileList components all inherit from the SelectableList base class. For this reason, these components are considered List-based components. A ComboBox consists of a text box and a List so it, too, is a List-based component.

A List is composed of rows. A DataGrid and a TileList are composed of rows that can be divided into multiple columns. The intersection of a row and a column is a cell. In a List, which is a single column of rows, each row is a cell. A cell has the following two important aspects:

The data values that cells hold are called items. An item is an ActionScript object used for storing the units of information in a List. A List can be thought of as an array with each indexed space of the array being an item. In a List, an item is an object that typically has a label property that is displayed and a data property that is used for storing data. A data provider is a data model of the items in a List. A data provider allows you to populate a List-based component simply by assigning it to the component's dataProvider property.
A cell can hold different types of data that range from text to images, MovieClips, or any class that you can create. For this reason, a cell must be drawn or rendered in a way that is appropriate for its content. Consequently, List-based components have a cell renderer to render its cells. In the case of the DataGrid, each column is a DataGridColumn object, which also has a cellRenderer property, so that each column can be rendered appropriately for its content.

All List-based components have cellRenderer and dataProvider properties that you can set to load and render the cells of these components. For information on using these properties and working with List-based components, see Working with a DataProvider and Working with a CellRenderer.

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