Abdul Qabiz on Web Technologies, Flash Platform, RIA, India

hi Abdul,
I have used your class it is awesome and realy greate work.
But still i have found some problem with this class :) when i am passing values to html it is working fine for both mozila and Internet Explorer.
and when i am passing values directly to swf like
http://localhost/myswf.swf?myname=faisal
in mozila it is working perfect but not working for internet explorer.
is it possible to pass values to swf in internet explorer or this is limitation of class or am i missing something ?
Please Help !
Hope you will reply.
Thanks

You don't need any javascript code. AS takes care of everything.
-abdul

I like your site Mr. Abdul Qabiz. Thank you for your site, its quite the enjoyable read. Jolly good now.

Jolly well done with the input strings, quite the systemic anomoly. Jolly good.

and in Flash(AS1 & AS2), you could do this by using the _url property.
Guess many would've known that?

Arul,
_url property returns the URL of the SWF. Which is the first case on above post. What I talked about is getting query-string which is passed to the wrapper page.
f.ex:
http://foo.com/page.htm?foo=var
You can get the foo=var name-value pair using above solution.
-abdul

So is the javascript required, or does your AS do all the work internally (if so, nice!)

This is less of a comment and more of an offer. You have no listed email address, so I thought that this would be the best way to get a hold of you.
Your actionscript was exactly what I've been looking for. My friend and I have had this idea for his local record label for quite some time: if he could put a flash movie on the root of his site (his homepage), as visitors come to to the root from other pages for his bands, the flash movie could read the bandID url parameter and write it to a text file. The movie could then use that text file to show a list of the most recent bands visited by displaying the picture associated with that bandID (i.e. http://www.recordlabel.org/bandID01.jpg). Do you think this is possible using flash? If so, would you like to earn some money to develop it? I have no doubt he would pay for your services, and I'd pitch in too cause I'd like to mod it out and use it for some other things. We're just a couple of kids, but if you're interested, we could pay you via paypal before the work is started. If not, thanks for your time anyways.

if it were PHP it would be much easier (there's a special function for it). But we have what we have (thanks for the post nonetheless)

Can this work in Mx 2004?
thxs

Yeah, you can make it work in Flash Player 7. Using Flash JavaScript gateway or my JSCommunicator Library insted of using ExternalInterface.
You can use similar technique.
-abdul

So is there any way to get the Variables from the Present URL with nothing else execpt for flash. You think that it would have it implamented but it dosent. Or does it? Is there a way to retrive it without any Java or anything more like for instants MYSPACE filters out Java :-\

hmm, if you are using Flash Player 9, then you should be able to do that.
If you are using JavaScript (SWFObject) to embed Flash application in your html page, then you should be able to do that and pass things via FlashVars.
-abdul

hmm, if you are using Flash Player 9, then you should be able to do that.
If you are using JavaScript (SWFObject) to embed Flash application in your html page, then you should be able to do that and pass things via FlashVars.
-abdul

But Ive only got flash player 8, what can I do ?
Katoey

I was able to simplify the conversion method (still compatible with ActionScript 2.0) by using String.fromCharCode():

public function convert
(src:String):String {


while(true) {


var i:Number = src.indexOf("%");


if (i==-1)


break;


var n:Number = parseInt("0x"+src.substr(i+1,2));


src = src.substr(0,i) + String.fromCharCode(n) + src.substr(i+3);


}


return src;


}

Ah, fixed a minor bug: if there was a "%25" on the querystring, that would cause problem. Try "tester.html?text1=abc%25def" with the previous version and you would get the character represented by "%de"!.

My quickie fix is below:

private function convert(src:String):String {


  var i:Number = src.indexOf("%25"); // look for %25, which is the percent-sign


  if (-1 != i) {


    // if we convert a percent-sign in-line, that will confuse


    // our simple parser. Let's replace it with a sentinel.


    src = src.substr(0,i) + "[Yz" + src.substr(i+3);


  }


  


  while(true) {


    i = src.indexOf("%");


    if (i==-1)


      break;


    var n:Number = parseInt("0x"+src.substr(i+1,2));


    src = src.substr(0,i) + String.fromCharCode(n) + src.substr(i+3);


  }


  


  i = src.indexOf("[Yz"); // look for sentinel


  if (-1 != i) {


    src = src.substr(0,i) + "%" + src.substr(i+3);


  }


  


  return src;


}

Thank's for you function.

Thanks my friend.. :)

Hi, is the flashboject.js file required? If yes, then this statement isn't entirely correct:
"You don't need any extra JavaScript code in HTML."
Embedding a JS file is equivalent to having extra JS code in your HTML.

I just downloaded and tested out your demo. It looks like the JS file is not required, which put a big smile to my face. Thanks, it's a very useful class and if I ever use it you will be given credit. Good job.

ANZ, flashobject.js is needed only for including flash object.

Thank's very useful.

Has anyone found a way to get the URL when allowScriptAccess="never" (like on MySpace.com).
ExternalInterface.call() throws a SecurityError: Error #2060
The code below always throws an error when embeded on MySpace.com, or a similar site that sets allowScriptAccess to never.
CODE
/CODE

> ExternalInterface.call() throws a SecurityError:
> Error #2060
That is intentional to have more security. Myspace (or alike sites) have faced serious security threats in past...Cross-site-scripting stuff...
I am not sure, if there is a way...
-abdul

Thanks for the reply Abdul. I have been trying to find a work around to this for a few days straight now. The interesting thing is that the Flash player *knows* what page it is on. When you attempt to run any ExternalInterface.call() inside a try / catch the error that is thrown contains a message similar to: "Sandbox security error: The swf at domain http://jason.com cannot access the page at http://www.myspace.com.
When I found this I was happy and just parsed through the error message with RegEx to pull out the URL. (I only need the URL for tracking purposes - I want to know what sites my SWF ends up on). However, and this is a big however, the error message ONLY contains the stack trace with the URLS of the error when in the Debugger Player.
This does not work in the retail consumer version of the player. Flash player knows the URL of the page it is on even when allowScriptAccess="never". I just want to find a way to capture that error message or some other way to get the page it is on - or even just the domain it is in.
Thanks for any ideas you have!
Also, I have been looking for the source of ExternalInterface.as so get a better idea of how to intercept the error it throws. Do you know where I could get that - it is in the playerglobal.swc.
thanks a ton!
--jason

I just need to get the domain name. I will have user embedded content so I can't use any JavaScript.

Thank you so very much for posting this and giving us the ability to download your code. It has helped me very much. I will be visiting your site much more.

@jon: Thanks for code changes and suggestions.
@jason, Andrew: I am not able to think total client-side (actionscript/flash) find the domain/page name that embeds SWF, if allowScriptAccess is not allowed. However, I can tell you other way that requires a server-side script...
<embed src="http://yourserver.com/getSWF.php" .. />
Where, getSWF.php might return something like this:-
yourapp.swf?referer=
If you serve your SWF through a PHP file, you can capture HTTP_REFERRER on server-side and pass it via query-param of SWF (if it has to go to SWF) or store in DB to track who is referring your APPS.
Does it make sense?
-abdul

Can you contact me if you are your compnay is doing Flex development? I am a developer and I need assistance getting some things in Flex to work even though they are things that should just work.

Hi Abdul,
I'm new to flex so please bear with me. I have a static HTML page that embeds Flex swf file and I pass one parameter to it.
like:





Test.swf?id=567





both in embed src and movie value.
I tried your example but it does not seem to work for me.
Any help is highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mahe

@Mahesh: QueryString class is not for getting there parameters passed to SWF via FlashVars or as query-string (as you mentioned). There is built-in support for your use-case. If you are using Flex, you can look at Application.application.parameters object for such properties, if you are using Flash, you can get the query-string passed as properties in stage - AS3 and _level0 - AS2....
Does it make sense?
-abdul

Hi abdul,
i am new to flex. in my application i am just passing the url inside navigateToURL ie var urlRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://localhost:8080/MyApp.swf?securityId=7");
navigateToURL(urlRequest,"_self");
.and when MyApp.swf loads in the creationComplete i am trying to access the securityId by mx.core.Application.application.parameters.securityId.
but this shows the result as "undefined".
please help.

Wow. Never thought of doing it with ExternalInterface.
Simple, yet effective.
Thanks a ton!

For all of you that can't get it to work, make sure that you param "allowScriptAccess" in your html embbeding flash is set to "always" if testing from your computer. it should work with "sameDomain" if tested from your server.




And just a thought to eliminate all string parsing, you could just use URLVariables to decode the querystring. so this code:





{


_params = {};


try


{


_all = ExternalInterface.call("window.location.href.toString");


_queryString = ExternalInterface.call("window.location.search.substring", 1);


if(_queryString)


{





var params:Array = _queryString.split('&');


var length:uint = params.length;





for (var i:uint=0,index:int=-1; i
{


var kvPair:String = params[i];


if((index = kvPair.indexOf("=")) > 0)


{


var key:String = kvPair.substring(0,index);


var value:String = kvPair.substring(index+1);


_params[key] = value;


}


}


}


}catch(e:Error) { trace("Some error occured. ExternalInterface doesn't work in Standalone player."); }


}





would look like this:





private function readQueryString():void


{


_params = {};


try


{


_all = ExternalInterface.call("window.location.href.toString");


_queryString = ExternalInterface.call("window.location.search.substring", 1);


_params = new URLVariables(_queryString);


}catch(e:Error) { trace("Some error occured. ExternalInterface doesn't work in Standalone player."); }


}





and dont forget to import flash.net.URLVariables and to change the Object to URLVariables for _params.





Really neat class though. very useful.

@Kinsley: Thanks, when I wrote this code I am not sure URLVariable class was there, I wrote it for first public beta of Flex 2. I would update the code to avoid loop, though URLVariables would be doing the same internally.
-abdul

Hi any one help me. How i fetch current URL of the HTML page in flash widget.

@guru: Since html page is in different domain, this code might not work because it requires html and swf in same domain or allowScriptAccess=always|sameDomain.
However, you can find about the html page using HTTP referer. Serve your flash-widgets through a server-side script, capture the header and pass it to SWF using flashvars or query string..
http://yourserver.com/getWidget.php?id=foo
Above URL can do a HTTP 30x redirection to
http://yourserver.som/widget.swf?referer=http:/...
http://otherserver.com/somepage.html is embedding the SWF..
Does that make sense?
-abdul

Hi Abdul,
I think the URLVariables solution given by DaDDeL is more good because it will automatically take care of url decoding.
Thanks for the structured and uselful class..
Best Regards
Anz

how do i do the exact opposite of what you did. i need to send a url-encoded string to a server. i can't get the variable to be a string...it deciphers my "&" and "=" into %3d etc.
i use URLVariables, URLRequest, and a URLLoader?? i don't need to load anything...just POST some info in a URLencoded string.
THANKS!

Oooh Abdul!
Do you remember the axe advertising???
Of course you do.
Like it ;)

dude this site rox !
found asnwers here that that cudnt anywhere
Good job , keep the site running :D

Did anyone ever get around the flash allowScriptAccess problem?

Hello.
Need a bit help, I am setting a variable in flex application. and pasing a xml file name from flashvars from HTML. If I direct give the file name it shows the data in gridtable but while passing it is not taking. here is the code::
Code for MXML file ::
----
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
----
code for HTML ::
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- ----

link to adobe live is broken

@Justin: Thanks, this article was posted during Flex 2 Beta time.. Link is down, I would correct it.
-abdul

Hello Abdul.
I read your comments and got several solutions from here. I stuck again, the problem is:
when I give a XML file name with path (ie: xml/tableGrid.xml) in MXML it works fine with HTTPService method. But when I am passing the XML file name through Flashvars it is giving error "UseProxy set to flase" which I alerady did. Alert shows the name of teh file correctly, SO passing name from flashvars is not a problem but why I am not getting the data in dataGrid from that XML??
Also if I put direct xml data in a variable and pass it through flashvars it is showing fine in DtatGrid without even HTTPService method. But I have to pass data from external XML File.
Where I am doing mistake , can You plese give some comment on this.
Thx
Anoop

You can't get URLs from Myspace/Facebook because of allowscriptaccess never. Please vote to fix the bug below so we have this information everywhere.
The browser URL information is actually available in the Error Code returned from a call to ExternalInterface (when Javascript is not allowed). This information is not available in the standard player (but is in the debug), ARGH…. We all want to track our Flash widgets so please vote to fix this bug. You would then be able to get the browser URL from the Error code returned on the API call from Myspace page (a bit of a hack but the information would be available).
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3095

This site also provides a way to get the url parameters in actionscript: http://www.flexpasta.com/index.php/2008/03/15/g...

Hi,
I have downloaded your code.
But whenever i try to give parameters in url like this :
"C:\Documents and Settings\jigaro\Desktop\ParamTesting\bin\ParamTesting.html?myName=Jigar&myHomeTown;=Ahmedabad"
I am getting following error :
Windows cannot find 'C:\Documents and Settings\jigaro\Desktop\ParamTesting\bin\ParamTesting.html?myName=Jigar&myHomeTown;=Ahmedabad'. Check the spelling and try again, or try searching for the item by clicking the Start button and then clicking Search.
What should i do now?

Hey Adbul,
Great Blog, I've learned a lot already! I really love this QueryString class you've written. Would you mind if I used some of it in a similar how to post for flash but rewriting it for as2?
I'll send you a link soon...
Thanks again and keep it up!

Abdul,
Thanks this is a great site, I've learned a lot already. I thought your QueryString class was very intuitive and easy to use. I wanted to let you know I actually liked it so much I ported it back to as2. And I figured I'd share that as well, so it's at my blog post here, Get Current URL and Query String Parameters to Flash. Just to let you know!
Thanks again for the class,
Evan @ Circlecube.com

Hi..i am trying to do fileuplaod from flex to java servlet..problem is request is not coming to servlet..If I use jsp instead of servlet then request is coming to jsp..am not sure what's wrong with srvlet approach..any help woudl be appreciated
here is my code:
here is my servlet
...................
package com.boa.flex.servlet;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletOutputStream;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileItem;
import org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileItemFactory;
import org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileUploadException;
import org.apache.commons.fileupload.disk.DiskFileItemFactory;
import org.apache.commons.fileupload.servlet.ServletFileUpload;
import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
/**
* @author nbkzk5e
*
*/
public class UploadFileServlet extends HttpServlet
{
/* (non-Javadoc)
* @see javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet#service(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest, javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse)
*/
private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(UploadFileServlet.class);
//@Override
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
throws ServletException, IOException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
super.doGet(req, resp);
doPost(req,resp);
}
//@Override
protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
throws ServletException, IOException {
log.info("am in servlet");
log.info("author"+req);
File disk = null;
FileItem item = null;
FileItemFactory factory = new DiskFileItemFactory();
Iterator iter = null;
List items = null;
ServletFileUpload upload = new ServletFileUpload( factory );
ServletOutputStream out = null;
try
{
// Parse the incoming HTTP request
// Commons takes over incoming request at this point
// Get an iterator for all the data that was sent
// TODO: Leverage generics
log.info("am in servlet");
items = upload.parseRequest( req );
iter = items.iterator();
// Set a response content type
res.setContentType( "text/xml" );
// Setup the output stream for the return XML data
out = res.getOutputStream();
out.println( "" );
// Iterate through the incoming request data
while( iter.hasNext() )
{
// Get the current item in the iteration
item = ( FileItem )iter.next();
// If the current item is an HTML form field
if( item.isFormField() )
{
// Return an XML node with the field name and value
out.println( "" );
// If the current item is file data
} else {
// Specify where on disk to write the file
// Using a servlet init param to specify location on disk
// Write the file data to disk
// TODO: Place restrictions on upload data
disk = new File( "C:\\"+item.getName() );
log.info("am after disk");
item.write( disk );
// Return an XML node with the file name and size (in bytes)
out.println( "" );
}
}
// Close off the response XML data and stream
out.println( "" );
out.close();
// Rudimentary handling of any exceptions
// TODO: Something useful if an error occurs
} catch( FileUploadException fue ) {
fue.printStackTrace();
} catch( IOException ioe ) {
log.info("io error");
ioe.printStackTrace();
} catch( Exception e ) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
here is web.xml
.................
XFireServlet
org.codehaus.xfire.transport.http.XFireConfigurableServlet
XFireServlet
/servlet/XFireServlet/*
XFireServlet
/services/*
FileServlet
com.boa.flex.servlet.UploadFileServlet
FileServlet
/action/*

@Evans: Thanks. Please feel free to use this code in whatever way you want to.
@Baji: I can't see flex code, please post it again enclosed by

yourcode

@Steve: I think you aren't running the code inside a webserver. Try running it on localhost, or place it on your webserver (or install LAMP/WAMP/MAMP for a quick Apache/Mysql environment on you local machine)

Great job Abdul!

Hi,
With all those comments I still can't get it running...
Here's my situation:
Dynamically generated page by Typo3 CMS.
On this page I have a little Flex application. And this application should detect the language parameter from the URL, wich is L.
The url looks like this : http://www.domain.com/index.php?id=1125&L;=1
I've tried all your solutions... nothing!
When I launch the flex app from Flexbuilder, I can see that qs.url contains the url. Good. But queryString remains desperatly empty...
And when I deploy the flex app to the website, then qs.url also remains empty...??
What did I forgot?? I'm really desperate...

Hi,
With all those comments I still can't get it running...
Here's my situation:
Dynamically generated page by Typo3 CMS.
On this page I have a little Flex application. And this application should detect the language parameter from the URL, wich is L.
The url looks like this : http://www.domain.com/index.php?id=1125&L;=1
I've tried all your solutions... nothing!
When I launch the flex app from Flexbuilder, I can see that qs.url contains the url. Good. But queryString remains desperatly empty...
And when I deploy the flex app to the website, then qs.url also remains empty...??
What did I forgot?? I'm really desperate...

Nice joob ;D

Hi, now what is the equivalent of Application.application.url in flash as3 ?? how to get the url in as3?? pls help..

Thanks, this article very good, I try successfull, one more thanks.

I doubt anybody will read this far, but it is much easier to use URLUtil.stringToObject to decode the query string. And it can handle decoding the parameters.

Hi Abdul,
I have been a web application developer using JSP and servlets etc. Now i am entering into flex development. Can you point me to some resource that can help me make the transition (Specfically aimed at Java web developers).
Thanks in advance,
Varun

Hi Mr. Abdul Qabiz
Can you advice me, what is the Variable or AS set for in the SWF? for both the Name & Hometown according to your SOURCE FILE. Can you show me the FLA?

This helped me, thank you soo much

I can't believe how long I had to search for this, it's exactly what I needed yet no body on any of the forums could help me. I knew the solution was there but it's a matter of knowing how to access the variable name.
Thanks so much,

Nice Article Adul

@vajahat: Glad to know, you found it useful. It's very old one and I believe, it can updated to use better technique.

Thank you very much, I started to use your class right away.

@olga:

Glad to know, it helped you.

-abdul

Hi Abdul,

That's great !

Here is a very interesting use of your code:

I have two Applications. MyAppWidget is a small swf used to navigate to different main applications on different servers.

In MyAppWidget:

var url:String = ""
url += navigateEvent.applicationBaseURL;
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
variables.email = _modelLocator.loginAttempt.username;
variables.pwd = _modelLocator.loginAttempt.password;
request.data = variables;

request.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;

try {
navigateToURL(request);
...


Im MyMainApp:
I use your wrapper and it work great ! However, as you can see my parameters are email and encrypted pwd over https, so I would like to use the URLRequestMethod.POST (not GET) to hide it (it's best practice too) and in this case the script doesn't work anymore...

Any suggestion ?

By the way, I have a recommendation: It will be great to create a js that can simply be include in the standard flex wrapper (html) and "push" flashvar on demand. I'm so disappointed that it's not out of the Flex 3 box ! maybe in Flex 4 ? My understanding is that BrowserManager can only read fragment (everything after # character by using browserManager.fragment) and not parameters (from GET or POST function in HTML)

Simon

Thanks Abdul! I could not get the flashvars to work with my custom app but this has solved it for me. No need to pass any variables to the EMBED tag via PHP! So easy! Thanks.

Hi,

thanks abdul for this great article, i knew about flashvars, how to get them, etc, but it seems this process is faster and easier ;) thks for the details :)

@+++

yuytuytuytu

How do I use this class?

Like this:

var qs:QueryString = new QueryString();
var id:int = qs.parameters.id;

Will this give me the id number in this url:

http://www.domain.com/index.html?id=5

Nice if it's so easy=)

That's right, it should work that way. I wrote this class long time back and have not tested it against latest browsers, flash player and flex framework.

Please let me know, if you confirm it still works.

It worked like a charm in Firefox 3 and up + explorer 8 and up=)

Good job man!

Hi abdul,
I have passed the ImgId in UrlRequest and then i used navigateToUrl to open new window. i opened application i am using Application.application.parameters.ImgId but it is not working although ?ImgId=1 is displaying in url. i have not used your QueryString.as class. It is must to use?

Please let me know what i am doing wrong?

Thanks
Sachin

Its excellent...works perfectly..i am exactly looking for this..Thanks you very much..

Thanks again

Warm regards
Sachin dev tripathi

Could you please advise to Adobe Flex team to make a class 'URLParser' or 'QueryString' like this? It must be added with the SDK. If your solution is not much complecated so why they had not think about it to already implement with SDK? :x

Thanks
Sachin
sachindevtripathi@gmail.com

Thank you abdul, this code is what I was needed to know.