all things L337

This is an example for anyone coming from AS2 and wants to access variables from another SWF through movie clip container levels.

Previously you would just do this allot has changed since then in AS3

container.loadMovie("fileName.swf"); //load the external SWF file.
trace( container.vars ); //access variables directly from the loaded external SWF by tracing etc.
container.functionX(); //directly call a function from another SWF file from a container level. 

This got me puzzled at first couldn’t find much information about it on Adobe labs. I was building a remote Shared Objects loader/writer which needed to work crossdomain as it was been built into an advert and needed to write the flash cookies to one domain (as you know Shared Objects data write by default to the current domain it’s been severed from) and then there was an additional SWF file sitting on another remote server that also needed to have access (reading & writing) to those Shared Objects data.

Unit A – loads in the SWF file remotely if needed (you will need crossdomain policy file or allow domain XXX to allow remote accessing of variables).
Unit B – contains “init” function that can pass strings directly through to be traced. the “helloWorld” variable can be accessed from Unit A.

Unit A

//crossdomain
Security.allowDomain("*");

//imports
import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.net.URLRequest;

//loader
var domain = ""; //www.domain.com/path/etc/
var url = domain + "unitB.swf";
var loader:Loader = new Loader();
loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( Event.INIT, onLoaderInit );
loader.load( new URLRequest( url ));

//onload function
function onLoaderInit( e:Event ):void {
 Object( loader.content ).init( "Hello World!" ); //Passing the var to unitB
 trace( Object(loader.content).helloWord ); //calling a remote variable "helloWord" from unitB by first loading the SWF
}

Unit B

//crossdomain
Security.allowDomain("*");

//variable
var helloWord = "Hello World!";

//function to pass paramaters with a trace
function init( param:String ):void{
 trace( param ); //Hello World!
}

Here ‘s another example how to gain access to levels or vars from within an external SWF (obviously you will need to use a loader class first to load in the external SWF then set the object/loader.content).

//Main SWF
var externalSWF = Object( loader.content ); //
vars = externalSWF.vars;
trace(vars);

function helloWorld(){
 trace("Hello World! (via MainSWF - Root Level)")
}

//External SWF
var vars:String = "Hello World! (via ExternalSWF)";

if(this.parent.parent != null){
 var parentLvl:Object = this.parent.parent as Object;
 parentLvl.hello(); //call a function on root level.
}