Note: this article was originally published to the Wharton Computing Developer’s Center.

While working on a Flex 2 application, I needed to render the contents of several datagrid columns as currency. I knew how to create an mxml item renderer to do the job, but the code required hard-coding the name of the datagrid column (i.e., each column would require its own renderer).

Ben Forta’s blog has an entry about using ActionScript to create a reusable item renderer for this situation. Using his code sample and tweaking it based on a commenter’s suggestion, I created a reusable currency renderer in a few lines of ActionScript. The renderer can be attached to any datagrid column that requires currency formatting–no hard-coding required.

Also, as someone new to Flex, ActionScript, and object-oriented programming, I found the simple renderer example to be a good way to start understanding how Flex 2 customization works.

Click here for the sample renderer and source code view.