A diferencia de una aplicación Adobe Air, cuando esta se compila en un archivo Flash (SWF), el método Download() de la clase FileReference despliega la ventana para almacenar el archivo pero este no es descargado, simplemente no ocurre nada.

Adobe sabe de este problema y lo postea acá: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/363/3637d5c3.html

La solución es sencilla:

El método Download falla sólo cuando la clase FileReference es instanciada dentro de una función local. Para solucionar el problema basta con declararla de manera global. Ejemplos:

De esta forma el método Download no hará nada:

function downloadFile():void {
var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference(); //FileReference com ámbito local
fileRef.download(new URLRequest(“myFile.txt”), “myFile.txt”);
}

De esta manera el método Download descargará el archivo y lo almacenará en el directorio elegido por el usuario:

private var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference(); //FileReference com ámbito global
function downloadFile():void {
fileRef.download(new URLRequest(“myFile.txt”), “myFile.txt”);
}

Quantas vezes já não passamos pela situação onde nosso arquivo era uma imagem, um mp3, um pdf, etc e não queríamos que ele abrisse no navegador, mas ao invés disso desejavamos forçar o download?

Não é necessário comprimir o arquivo (gerar um zip, um rar ou qualquer outra coisa) ou forçar pelo php, .net, etc. Você pode usar a classe FileReference. Todo mundo lembra dessa classe na hora de fazer upload, mas a maioria esquece o método download que abre a caixa de diálogo no navegador para salvar o arquivo.

O código é muito simples:

// definindo url do arquivo
var fileURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest(
		"http://www.nyan.com.br/ico/feed.png");

// instancionado objeto file reference
var fileReference:FileReference = new FileReference();

fileReference.download(fileURL);

Só não esqueça de uma coisa: O Flash Player 10 sofreu várias atualizações de segurança e uma delas está diretamente relacionada à classe FileReference. Não é possivel chamar os métodos download ou browser se não for através de uma interação do usuário (pressionando uma tecla ou clicando com o mouse, por exemplo).

Today, i faced a weird problem of fileReference.load() not working in AIR. Even, in the latest 3.3 SDK. To resolve that, you have to install Flex Builder Update. Then, modify your App.xml into air version 1.5. As, to get the benefits of latest AIR Version.

Otherwise, in AIR: Code gets compiled but when we select a file from system, it throws a error.

InsideRia -  – http://www.insideria.com/2009/03/java-collections-for-flex.html

InsideRia – animation – http://www.insideria.com/2009/03/using-tweener-for-scripted-ani.html

Mike Chambers – AIR – http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2009/03/11/monitoring-file-changes-in-adobe-air/

Ryan Stewart – Catalyst – http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f1472v1059

Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems -Adobe

Adobe Flex is a collection of technologies released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross platform rich Internet applications based on the proprietary Adobe Flashplatform. The initial release in March 2004 by Macromedia included a software development kit, anIDE, and a J2EE integration application known as Flex Data Services. Since Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, subsequent releases of Flex no longer require a license for Flex Data Services, which has become a separate product rebranded as LiveCycle Data Services. -Wikipedia

There are many sites providing the tutorials and samples in net.Here is my Flex samples blog ,

http://gnanz-flexworld.blogspot.com

In this little tutorial i will show you how we can upload one or more file(s) using the FileReferenceList in Flash CS3.

We will use amfphp to upload the image to a location on our server … if you do not have amfphp installed, check out my prevouis post …

We will begin by declaring a new FileReferenceList object … after that we will set the object to show the browse window to select the files that need to be uploaded.

We also need to listen for the select event , this event is triggerd whenever enter is pressed, or the select button is clicked from the upload component.

Creating a new FileReferenceList

Now we specify the upload destination location, hereby i use a php file that uploads the file from the uploadReferenceList to the location specified in the php file (a directory on our amfphp server).

Upload Script PHP

Now having than that, we now specify the location of this file in Flash.

Upload Script Location

Now , this is what the fileSelectHandler looks like, we will loop through the fileList of the FileReference (so all the files we selected for upload), and push them into a custom function uploadSingleFile….

Select Handler

Here we just upload the file that was passed into the function to the php file on our amfphp server …

We also add a complete handler , so can trigger an action for the upload complete event.

Upload Single File

Upload Complete Handler

Loading Image from local file system using the power of  Flash Player 10, Filereference.load()
Check the Demo the link contains the source file.

In previous versions of Flash Player, when a user selects a file from his machine for uploading, developers had to send the file to the server and get it back to access the data in the file selected. In Flash Player 10, developers can access the File data selected by the user without a round trip to the server. This is an amazing enhancement. Adobe Rocks !!!

You can allow users to select a file and do all manipulations on the client (Flash Player) and let your user save it back to his system instead of sending the file to the server and processing it on the server.

One more change to the FileReference class in Flash Player 10. The FileReference object methods browse, download, and save and the FileReferenceList.browse method will succeed only when called from within an ActionScript function that is the result of a user-initiated action. Find more details at this URL http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer10_uia_requirements.html?devcon=f2

I created a very simple sample which shows the changes mentioned above.

First you will have to configure your Flex Builder to target to Flash Player 10 and also use the new player APIs. This is very simple. Please follow the steps in this URL http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Targeting+Flash+Player+10+Beta

First lets see how we can load and modify the file on the client.

Loading and saving file

First invoke the FileReference.browse() function and let the user select the file. Once the file selected event is invoked you should invoke FileReference.load() function to load the file into memory. Once loaded, it’s all yours in the sample I am allowing user to select a file and then loading the same and displaying it in a TextArea.

Download the source code from here http://sujitreddy.g.googlepages.com/FileRefSample.mxml

Try sample at this URL http://www.sujitreddyg.com/samples/filereferencesample/FileRefSample.html

Few functions in the source file are explained below.

Loading the file

In the function below, calling FileReference.browse() will pop up a window for user to select a file.

private function browseFile():void{

fileRef = new FileReference();

fileRef.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, onFileSelected);

……(more)

var textTypeFilter:FileFilter = new FileFilter(“Text Files (*.txt)”,”*.txt”);

try{

fileRef.browse([textTypeFilter]);

}catch(err:Error){logData(err.message);}

}

Function below will be invoked when the user selects the file. You can see that we are invoking the load() function and are waiting for the load to complete.

private function onFileSelected(event:Event):void{

fileRef.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, onProgress);

fileRef.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);

//this is where we load the file into memory

fileRef.load();

}

In the onComplete handler function, you can access the data using the FileReference object’s data property as shown in the source file attached.

Saving the file

In the sample we are displaying the data in the file in a TextArea. You can modify the data and then click on the save button. The save button will invoke the function below.

public function saveFile():void{

saveFileRef = new FileReference();

saveFileRef.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, onSaveFileSelected);

//this will throw a window for user to select the location

//and file name to save. Second argument is the default name

saveFileRef.save(fileDataBox.text,fileRef.name);

}

That’s all you need to do

Other change as mentioned above is that you can invoke the browse/upload and other methods as described in the URL above only on user generated events like button click. In the sample I tried invoking a function on creationComplete event to popup a file selection popup using the browse() function. You can see that the call fails as creationComplete is not a user invoked event.

The same function is invoked on click of a button and it works perfectly. Please check attached code.

Mike Chambers posted that Flash Player 10 is officially live. This completes your 1-2 punch of RIA/game platform releases of Silverlight and Flash this week.

Flash Player 10 is great news. There are so many things in it from a new data structure (Vector), to local FileReference, to Matrix and 3D helpers, to speed improvements and video enhancements being able to play other video types and more (this was actually in a late version of flash player 9 as well but will be used more here). It does take time for flash versions to get out in the wild, about 9 months to where they are in the 90%-95% range where you can convince people to use it in production, but getting those skills now is good.  The scripting platform is still Actionscript 3 so anyone still making Flash Player 8 and AS2 stuff is now two revolutions behind.

Another thing I am looking forward to soon (next week) that is missing from both Flash and Silverlight, is the ability to develop for the iPhone, which Unity3D is dropping the iPhone kit on Oct 22nd. Unity3D has effectively taken Director’s 3d game development (hardware accelerated) market lead away this year and late last year and is a great platform. Director who?

Lots of great tools and platforms to create the innovative new applications, games and markets that are so needed right now. Go create!

First a little background info. Here at Summit, we have three servers for any given client: dev, stage, and live. Dev is where we build and break things. Stage is a mirror of the live servers in terms of software and setup, and is where we push things from dev when we’re ready to show the client. Live is, obviously, the live site.

We have a certain client that is an all-Flash e-commerce site, so obviously it has an SSL certificate. Up ’til now, we’ve been fine with a proper cert for live, and self-signed certs for dev and stage. This has caused some annoyances, like IE and Firefox being overly annoying about warning you when you visit dev to test things. I mean, all in all I like it that browsers are getting more secure, but when I say it’s OK to visit a site, I mean it. But really, it was just an annoyance and not a problem.

Until recently, when this same client had a project that involved file upload. Now, we thought we were on top of things by opening access and disabling NT Authorization to the upload folder, but it turns out that having a self-signed cert will cause Firefox and Safari to have issues with FileReference.upload(), namely causing onIOErrors.

It was very tricky to track down, because Safari would always upload at least one file, sometimes several, before error-ing (erring?), Firefox would never upload any files, and IE would always upload files, unless we had a batch of files to upload, in which case it seemed to upload 3 files at once and no more (and by “at once” I mean one after the other, not all three concurrently, because FileReference don’t play that game).

Long story short, it took five people banging their heads off of at least five desks for well over 30 person hours before our ColdFusion programmer, Trevor, came up with the self-signed certificate theory.

To test it, we basically removed all vestiges of https from the experience. This meant removing the redirect on the cfm page, setting upload URL to http, and removing the :443 port number from the URL. We made sure we were fully on an non-signed site, and viola, it worked like a champ.

The long term solution is to obviously pony up for the actual signed certs, or even a wildcard cert, so that we have a more accurate environment on our dev and stage servers.

So, in short, FileReference + SSL = all sorts of headaches. Try not to go down that road, but if you must, make sure you have valid certs on every server and that you’re on top of your authorization. It definitely helped us to have Brian, our extremely smart IT guru, manage the servers in this process.

Whew. Time for a margarita.

Ya cuando estamos realizando proyectos en ActionScript de manera constante nos damos cuenta de unos de los problemas más comunes: comunicación. ¿De dónde vamos a sacar los datos a mostrar?. Poner todos los datos DENTRO de Flash usualmente no es buena idea: no es fácil de mantener y sería un sitio demasiado estático. Por eso es necesario que sepamos leer e interpretar fuentes de datos para presentarlos con las bondades de Flash y ActionScript junto con la flexibilidad de XML o una base de datos.

(imagen tomada del post original)

Este post de Sheridan Interactive Multimedia es un muy buen recurso para aprender lo básico por 3 razones: ejemplos con código fuente, enfoque a NO programadores, manejo de múltiples fuentes de datos y funciones: XML, navigateToURL, SharedObject, FlashVars, ExternalInterface (para javascript), URLRequest, FileReference, URLLoader, URLVariables, WebServices y serialización de datos. Además, con la referencia de cómo unir todos estos datos y presentarlos en una interface adecuada.

I have been consuming all the great additions to Flash 10 this weekend and one that really jumps out after you get past the visual, text and sound features (which are spectacular btw and most of what the community was asking for). But one feature snuck by, this is the one that ByteArray (Thibault Imbert) mentions/pointed out for managing files directly within Flash.

File Reference runtime access — Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.

This greatly lowers the bar to using Flash as a photo editor, document manager, customized application experiences, marking up content and saving locally, all without the need for server side script. I am a big fan of server side technologies and develop with them but even for bettering performance this could be huge.

Scenarios where this might be useful is editing applications, note taking (download a book with your notes), editors for docs/games/3d/textures,,, the possibilities are endless really.

Flash 9 just got mainstream and production ready (flash 9 penetration) at the tail end of last year but there are so many great things in the new version that I hope it comes out very soon. Flash it turning into quite a platform.

Alternativa Platform also has updated their engine for Flash 10 already (they must have had some inside early accessibility to it) and there are great possibilities here.

It is only beta (Flash 10) but there are great market opportunities to prepare for when this launches. Keep your eye on where the puck will be, not where it is currently at. I was concerned when Adobe bought Macromedia and the future of Flash but it appears they are taking this bull by the horns.

If you are ready to play with Flash 10 here is Flex and FlashDevelop updates to help you get started.

Also here is some code posted at ByteArray from Pleh for testing the new FileReference runtime access, usage is extremely simple and rests on this

var data:ByteArray = fileRef['data'];

/*
  FileReference Load Example By Pleh 17/05/08
*/

package {
	import flash.display.Loader;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.net.FileReference;
	import flash.net.FileFilter;
	import flash.utils.ByteArray;

	public class Flash10Test extends Sprite
	{
		private var fileRef:FileReference;

		public function Flash10Test()
		{
			fileRef = new FileReference();
			fileRef.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, selectFile);
			fileRef.addEventListener(Event.OPEN, openFile);
			stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,stageClick);
		}

		private function selectFile(e:Event):void {
			fileRef['load']();
		}

		private function openFile(e:Event):void {
			var data:ByteArray = fileRef['data'];
			var loader:Loader = new Loader();
			loader.loadBytes(data);
			addChild(loader);
		}

		private function stageClick(e:Event):void{
			fileRef.browse([new FileFilter("All Formats (*.jpg,*.gif,*.png,*.swf)", "*.jpg;*.gif;*.png;*.swf", "JPEG;jp2_;GIFF;SWFL")]);
		}

	}
}

Here’s another interesting issue: I was implementing a FileReference-driven download feature, and had trouble getting it to work. I noted that the download() method returns false for any number of reasons, according to the documentation. One of them is if the parameters are invalid or of the incorrect type. I had double-checked against this by tracing out the values being sent in (the file URL and the default name to supply in the Save As… dialog box), and that they were both Strings.

Well, they were both defined and Strings, but it turns out that that an “incorrect format” includes otherwise valid Strings that have certain characters in them, in this case a colon. One split(“:”).join(“-”) later, and I’m in business.

What this brought up for me was the question as to whether or not it was suitable for the FileReference class to throw errors, preferably detailed errors, or even to just automatically strip out offending characters in that parameter. Errors seem like a no brainer…I would have saved 10 or 15 minutes if I had seen something like “The defaultFileName parameter cannot have any of the following characters in it: / \ : * ? ” < > | % Your supplied: [value of defaultFileName]“

Even better, why not have that sort of information encapsulated into that FileReference black box and just strip ‘em out? It would have worked instantly and I wouldn’t have cared about a missing colon. But I can see why you wouldn’t want that in all situations. So what’s the better Object-Oriented behavior?