web developer, usability, analytics

There are two methods that I have found for for doing this. (Essentially the same thing, just depends on your coding style and how you want to keep things organized.)

Method 1:

  Embed XML (8.9 KiB, 135 hits)

package  {
 
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
	import flash.utils.ByteArray;
 
	public class EmbedXML extends MovieClip {
 
		[Embed(source="my.xml", mimeType="application/octet-stream")] 
		protected const EmbeddedXML:Class;
		private var _xml:XML;
 
		public function EmbedXML():void  {
			addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init, false, 0, true);
		}
 
		private function init(e:Event):void {
			//_xml = XML(new EmbeddedXML());
 
			var contentfile:ByteArray = new EmbeddedXML();
			var contentstr:String = contentfile.readUTFBytes( contentfile.length );
			_xml =  new XML( contentstr );
			trace(_xml);
		}
	}
}

Method 2:

  Embed XML Class (8.9 KiB, 103 hits)

//.as file that you embed the xml in
package {
	import flash.utils.ByteArray;
 
	[Embed(source="my.xml",mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
 
	public class MyXML extends ByteArray {
 
		public function MyXML():void {	}
	}
}
//usage:
package  {
 
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
	import flash.utils.ByteArray;
 
	public class EmbedXMLTwo extends MovieClip {
 
		private var _xml:XML;
 
		public function EmbedXMLTwo():void  {
			addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init, false, 0, true);
		}
 
		private function init(e:Event):void {
			//var myxml:MyXML = new MyXML();
			//_xml = XML (myxml);
 
			var contentfile:ByteArray = new MyXML();
			var contentstr:String = contentfile.readUTFBytes( contentfile.length );
			_xml =  new XML( contentstr );
			trace(_xml);
		}	
	}
}

For a project I was on awhile ago, I needed to decorate a character with different items of clothing. When the user was done ‘dressing’ their character, they would press a button and the whole character would shrink down so it would fit as an ornament on a tree. In order to not confuse the issue, I am going to only show the code that enables you to take a movieclip and create a png from it. In order to do this, you will need to include the Flex SDK as a part of your flash build (for the Base64Encoder class) and you need to download as3corelib. To include the Flex SDK, in your Flash preferences add this line: (Mac OSX)

//VERSION will prob be 3.5, 4 etc...
/Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4/sdks/flex_sdk_VERSION/frameworks/projects/framework/src

Code after the jump…

  CreatePNG (44.4 KiB, 173 hits)

Read more

Here is a code snippet that I have been using to create dropdown menus from movieclips in actionscript 3. I probably should try to wrap this up in a class as I bust out this snippet whenever I need this functionality. Usually when I have a ‘button’ that I need to have open up a larger movieclip with selectable/dynamic information in it. Would be nice to set a moviclip to be the ‘menu trigger’ (in the example: _sMouseOver) and another to be ‘the target’ (in the example: _sMenu) in a class… Maybe I will work on a class implementation later.

  AS3 Mouse Over Menu (15.4 KiB, 731 hits)

Code Snippet after the jump: Read more

Recently I had a need to use the HTTPService & ArrayCollection Flex classes from inside Flash CS4. In order to do this you need to point to the Flex classes in your Flash preferences as outlined in this post. Code after the jump. Read more

One thing that I do quite often in Flash is load XML. In order to save time, I separated a lot of that code out into external class files. I also created a snippet of code that calls those files in order to save time when I want to use them. (You will need Lee Brimlow’s snippets panel for this to work.)

The LoadXML and LoadURL classes are probably very similar to those found at Learning Actionscript 3 as that is where I learned a lot about this topic previously. Hope you find this helpful!

  Load XML files (774.5 KiB, 471 hits)

Code snippet (for the panel) after the break…

Read more