ActionScript 3.0 Bible

Chapter 27. Networking Basics and Flash Player Security

FEATURED CLASSES

• flash.display.Loader

• flash.net.URLLoader

• flash.net.URLRequest

• flash.net.URLVariables

• flash.net.sendToUrl()

• flash.net.navigateToUrl()

• flash.system.Security

A time will come where you, like Leif Eriksson, will yearn to leave the fjords of Iceland, which you're accustomed to, and explore the great unknown across the Atlantic. Now, replace "fjords of Iceland" with "the contents of memory" and "the Atlantic" with "the internet," and you've got something to talk about. The experience of crossing the sea differs for each who crosses it, and so varies the manner in which you can communicate with the vastness of the internet. Besides containing an incomprehensible variety of data in a comparably broad multitude of formats, the internet has innumerable services you can communicate in both directions with. In this and the following chapters, I'll dive into the many ways Flash Player can make use of the internet. In this chapter, I'll start with some of the most useful and simple ways to do so. I'll present an overview of the most common and best-supported protocol in Flash Player for networking, HTTP. You'll use ActionScript 3.0 to open a web page, load graphics and SWFs, and load files. Finally, I'll look at Flash Player's security model, which you must be aware of when developing networking-enabled applications.

HTTP in Brief

The internet is kept alive by the furious and continuous exchange of information. This exchange takes ...