Truncate Text Until Last Visible Word?

Thank you very much Jin-Huang. What is strange is that userData is comming back null in the TextLines - I'm not sure why. The code I tried is:

private var richEditableTextMarkup:XML =

<p direction="ltr" justificationRule="auto" justificationStyle="auto" leadingModel="romanUp" paragraphEndIndent="0">

     <span alignmentBaseline="useDominantBaseline" breakOpportunity="auto" cffHinting="horizontalStem">

          Auhtor: Baz Maz Rataz

     </span>

     <span alignmentBaseline="useDominantBaseline">

          This text in my code is much longer than displayed here.

     </span>

</p>;

public function creationCompleteHandler(e:Event):void {

   richEditableText.textFlow = TextFlowUtil.importFromXML(richEditableTextMarkup);

}

public function truncateVisibleText():void {

    var firstTextLine:TextLine = richEditableText.getChildAt(0) as TextLine;

    var lastTextLine:TextLine = richEditableText.getChildAt(richEditableText.numChildren - 1) as TextLine;

    var firstTextFlowLine:TextFlowLine = firstTextLine.userData as TextFlowLine;

    var lastTextFlowLine:TextFlowLine = lastTextLine.userData as TextFlowLine;

    var beginningPosition:int = firstTextFlowLine.absoluteStart;

    var endPosition:int = lastTextFlowLine.absoluteStart + lastTextFlowLine.textLength;

}

<s:RichEditableText id="richEditableText" width="300" height="100" />

<s:Button label="Truncate" click="clickHandler(event)" />

The TextLine's come in fine, but when I introspect their userData property in the debugger it comes back null. Any idea why?

I did find another way to go about doing it, but it uses tlf_internal:

public function truncateVisibleText(textFlow:TextFlow):String {

     var textFlowComposer:StandardFlowComposer = textFlow.flowComposer as StandardFlowComposer;

     var lastContainerController:ContainerController = textFlowComposer.getControllerAt(textFlowComposer.numControllers - 1);

     var lastTFLine:TextFlowLine = lastContainerController.tlf_internal::getLastVisibleLine();

     var endPosition:int = lastTFLine.absoluteStart + lastTFLine.textLength;

     var truncatedText:String = richEditableText.text.slice(0, endPosition);

     return truncatedText;

}

Do you think this is an acceptable solution?

Finally, I would like to take the truncated text, and after saving it to the db, I'd like to also truncate it on screen. Of course, if I just replace the text of the RichEditableText container, all the formatting would be lost. Do you have any suggestions on the logic or strategy I should look into using to truncate the text while maintaining the formatting (there are a couple of P tags for example).

Cheers!