R – flex regain lost focus

The Text component needs a width if you want it to automatically wrap for you. If you used a string with newlines in it it will work grow as you expected without a width. For you, use:

Edit: Ok, you want it centered in a canvas of varying size. Then you can:

<mx:HBox 
    width="500"
    paddingLeft="5"
    paddingRight="5">
    <mx:Spacer width="100%" />
    <mx:Text 
        width="100%"
        text="{text}" />
    <mx:Spacer width="100%" />
</mx:HBox>

You might want to look at the DataGrid.variableRowHeight property as, when this is set to false (the default) all rows will be the same height as the largest itemRenderer. You could also look into writing your own itemRenderer for each DataColumn.

If all you really want to do is set the row height based on the number of items in the dataProvider though, you could just set the DataGrid.rowHeight property like this (assuming your grid has a fixed height, say 100%) :

myDataGrid.dataProvider = myArray;
myGrid.rowHeight = Math.floor((myGrid.height - myGrid.headerHeight)/myArray.length);

(I'm taking the floor here because if you end up with a fractional value that rounds up, you'll need a scroll bar)

The only problem with this approach, as I think you've noticed, is that the itemRenderer might not display properly in a row that's too small. I guess you could solve this by changing the font within the renderer based on its height.