Question

I know how to access external XML file in ActionScript 2, however in this project the requirement is that the SWF file must be self-contained.

The reason I’m keeping the XML is because it’s the output of another program, so if I can keep the XML as it is, I avoid manual data input.

I understand that there’s the meta-tag available in AS3, but I’m stuck with AS2 unfortunately.

Is there a way to embed the XML file, or read the data and store as a variable at compile/publish time with ActionScript 2?

Answer 1

After testing extensively, I found that my limitation is too much to depend solely on Flash to solve my problems.

Because I’m limited to AS2 and I can’t use external XML, it means that…

1. I can’t embed the XML (AS3 feature).
2. If I try to paste the entire XML into a textfield on the stage, it surpass the max char limit of 65535.
3. I can’t paste the XML straight into code editor (multi-line string literal is AS3 feature).
4. For #3, Even after I escaped all quotes and remove line-breaks, Flash will choke on a variable that long.

So what I did was create a separate HTML page, using jQuery I load the target XML file and clean up all the data the Flash file doesn’t make use of, and spit out the result onto a div, properly escaping angled brackets and quotes, this way the result XML data is small enough to fit into a textfield on the stage that I can use as input.

So the work flow becomes:

Generate XML -> Open HTML page -> Copy Cleaned XML -> Paste into Textfield in Flash -> Publish

It might be another step, but HTML/JavaScript can run anywhere and is pretty braindead simple for my users, so it ended up being a good solution considering my limitations.