Apache – FLEX: Repeating a background on component

Put the files in a queue and load them one after each other. Flex (the framework) won't do this for you but you can relatively easily write your own in AS3.

Personally i use my own solution for this but there's a bunch of available existing solutions for this too; the most common probably being Bulk Loader.

Here's a custom component that will fill any rectangle with an image. It will not stretch the image if the rectangle aspect ratio is not the same as the image, nor will it show white space, but rather it will clip the edges of the image. The image will be scaled. Always at least one dimension will be 100% filling the rectangle, but the other dimension will be clipped.

This is based on Flex's UIComponent, component life-cycle, and Image.

ClippedImage.as

package com.preston.www.view.background.components {
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.geom.Rectangle;

import mx.controls.Image;
import mx.core.UIComponent;

//--------------------------------------
//  Events
//--------------------------------------

[Event(name="complete", type="flash.events.Event")]

public class ClippedImage extends UIComponent {

    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    //
    //  Constructor
    //
    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    public function ClippedImage() {
        image = new Image();
        image.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,image_completeHandler);
        addChild(image);
    }

    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    //
    //  Variables
    //
    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    private var image:Image;

    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    //
    //  Properties
    //
    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    //----------------------------------
    //  source
    //----------------------------------

    public function get source():Object {
        return image.source;
    }

    public function set source(value:Object):void {
        image.source = value;
    }

    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    //
    //  Overridden methods
    //
    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    override protected function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void {
        super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth, unscaledHeight);

        var imageMeasuredWidth:Number = image.measuredWidth;
        var imageMeasuredHeight:Number = image.measuredHeight;
        var imageAspectRatio:Number = imageMeasuredWidth / imageMeasuredHeight;

        var imageWidth:Number;
        var imageHeight:Number;

        // try setting image according to width first
        imageWidth = unscaledWidth;
        imageHeight = imageWidth / imageAspectRatio;

        // if a gap exists vertically, set image according to height
        if (imageHeight < unscaledHeight) {
            imageHeight = unscaledHeight;
            imageWidth = imageAspectRatio * imageHeight;
        }

        image.setLayoutBoundsSize(imageWidth, imageHeight);

        // set image x and y
        var imagex:Number = (unscaledWidth - imageWidth) / 2;
        var imagey:Number = (unscaledHeight - imageHeight) / 2;

        image.setLayoutBoundsPosition(imagex, imagey);

        scrollRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, unscaledWidth, unscaledHeight);
    }

    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    //
    //  Event handlers
    //
    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    private function image_completeHandler(event:Event):void {
        dispatchEvent(event);
    }
}
}

Then, in your app you just set an mxml tag for this component as follows:

<components:ClippedImage id="background" width="100%" height="100%"
                         source="assets/images/winery.jpg"/>