Programming Flex 3

File Upload/Download

Flex applications support file upload and download using the Flash Player flash.net.FileReference class. You can enable the user to download one file at a time, as well as select and upload one or more files at the same time.

Downloading Files

Use the download() method of a FileReference object to download a file. The download() method requires at least one parameter: a URLRequest object. The URLRequest object should point to the URL from which you want to download the file. Here’s an example that downloads a file called test.txt:

var fileReference:FileReference = new FileReference();
fileReference.download(new URLRequest("test.txt"));

As soon as the download() method is called, Flash Player will open a dialog prompting the user to accept the file. The user has complete control over whether to save the file, where to save the file, and what to name the file. However, by default, the filename field in the dialog will be filled out with the name of the file as it exists on the server. If you want to customize the default filename in the dialog, you can do so with a second parameter in the download() method. This is particularly useful when the URL from which the file is requested is a script that generates the file or proxies the request to the file. For example, if the URL from which you request the file is test.cgi, a script that outputs a text file, you likely will want to use a custom filename rather than allow it to default to test.cgi. Here’s an example:

fileReference,download(new ...