Setting and getting styles on a component instance

Any UI component instance can call the setStyle() and getStyle() methods directly to set or retrieve a style. The following syntax sets a style and value for a component instance:

instanceName.setStyle("styleName", value);

This syntax retrieves a style for a component instance:

var a_style:Object = new Object();
a_style = instanceName.getStyle("styleName");

Notice that the getStyle() method returns the type Object because it can return multiple styles having different data types. For example, the following code sets the font style for a TextArea instance (aTa) and then retrieves it using the getStyle() method. The example casts the returned value to a TextFormat object to assign it to a TextFormat variable. Without the cast, the compiler would issue an error for attempting to coerce an Object variable to a TextFormat variable.

import flash.text.TextFormat;

var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
tf.font = "Georgia";
aTa.setStyle("textFormat",tf);
aTa.text = "Hello World!";
var aStyle:TextFormat = aTa.getStyle("textFormat") as TextFormat;
trace(aStyle.font);

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