Actionscript Cookbook

20.21. Writing Server-Side Functions in ActionScript

Problem

You want to write Sever-Side ActionScript (SSAS) that you can call from a Flash Remoting movie.

Solution

Create an ASR file as part of your ColdFusion or JRun web application.

Discussion

SSAS is available only for ColdFusion and JRun, and it allows you to create server-side functions that you can call from Flash Remoting. The advantage is that with SSAS, you can perform some basic server-side functionality (such as database queries and HTTP requests) using familiar ActionScript syntax. The disadvantage of SSAS is that it is quite limited in its (documented) functionality.

Note

Flash Remoting SSAS (as opposed to the FlashCom SSAS in Recipe 14.14) is based on Java, and the standard Java API is available in a modified, ActionScript-like form. This might hold some appeal to Java developers. The syntax is entirely ActionScript-like, and it also allows for the less strict declaration and typing of ActionScript variables. However, you can create objects of all Java types. For example:

myFile = new File("test.txt");

To write SSAS, all you need to do is create an ASR file within the web application. The file must end with the .asr extension and should contain functions, which can be written with any plain-text editor. For example, an ASR file could contain the following:

function mySSASFunction (  ) {
  return "This is a value from SSAS";
}

Within your Flash movie, you can create a service object that maps to an ASR file using the getService( ...