The project source repository is located at http://code.google.com/p/reusable-fx/
You can also view source of the example below.

I consider few things extremely important when creating new components:

Reusability

New DataGrid component should work not only for one cool demo but could be reused and reconfigured in many different applications. Every newly added element should support styling and/or skinning.

Extensibility

New DataGrid should allow further extension without need to rewrite too much code. During implementation of new features standard, well documented interfaces and patterns should be created to make further development easier. For example current version support filtering of text and numerical data but creation of filter for date ranges or images should be straightforward.

Compatibility

Compatibility with standard Flex DataGrid should be regarded very important and every incompatibilities should be well documented. For example one should be able to use filtering on one column when leaving other columns unchanged. Newly created interfaces should be similar to those known from standard Flex components.

I am trying to follow the rules above but of course it is not always possible. Especially if you are working on something for a long time it is difficult to tell what is intuitive for “ordinary user”. So if you play with example below and found something which in your opinion should work differently don’t hesitate to add a comment or create new issue on http://code.google.com/p/reusable-fx/issues/list !

Summary

MDataGrid can be used just like standard DataGrid: you define a dataProvider and columns either in MXML or in ActionScript. If you want a column to allow filtering replace DataGridColumn with MDataGridColumn which by default has a text wildcard filtering enabled. If you prefer to filter column in a different way change filterEditor property of the column to point to some filter editor from com.iwobanas.controls.dataGridClasses.filterEditors package. You can find more information in the ASDoc in the source code.

Example

This example demonstrates live searching and filtering MDataGrid with about 400 rows.
View source is enabled, you can download zipped sources from here.

For better experience open example in separate window.

Given above I decided to create new more flexible and reusable searching mechanism for DataGrid. As I was working on it I realized that other components (e.g. TextArea) may also support searching. That’s why I decided to create ISearchable interface to be implemented by every component supporting searching.

I also decided that searching should support standard wildcards like “*” or “?” so I created WlidcardUtils class to convert wildcards to regular expressions which are internally used by my searching mechanism. I know that regular expressions aren’t very fast so maybe one day I will write my own mechanism for matching wildcards but for now RegExp’s are enough.

To support searched text to be highlighted I have implemented BoldSearchItemRenderer which can be used instead of standard DataGridItemRenderer.

Finally I have extended DataGrid to implement ISearchable interface. I haven’t named it SearchableDataGrid since I am going to add many other features later and as AdvancedDataGrid name was in use too I decided to leave the name DataGrid changing only the package.

This example demonstrates live searching DataGrid with about 400 rows.
View source is enabled, you can download zipped sources from here.