I have a FLA with some text but the person that will be sending the SWF doesn't have Flash and doesn't know anything about Flash either.
Is there some way to build the FLA so that the text can be changed simply by modifying the SWF somehow? Due to company policy, the SWF cannot read from external files.
We tried programming into the FLA that it read an XML in another server, but that's not allowed. I also cannot send the SWF with another file (ie. an xml file).
Thanks.
Use FLASM or SWFMILL which are free command line assembler/disassembler for swf files. Use any of the one to disassemble your swf. You can open the result file in any of the text editor, find and replace your text and assemble it as swf again. Hope it helps.
It is a strange logic to try to modify a FLA file without Flash. A FLA file is a binary file, you'll need an editor to read it and I'm pretty sure Adobe isn't allowing 3rd party editors legally.
But yes, it's fine to have a dynamic TextField where you can send the parameter and change the data. Please note - you need to send the data. Means it has to come from outside.
What are the options? Well, actually, there are few:
Loading from an external file or getting it from a server side script. You said it's not allowed, let's omit this method.
Read FlashVars. If you publish it within a HTML page, you can actually feed some data via FlashVars. Not only 1 variable, but as many as you want. And it's fine for small strings, but if you plan to pass a text larger than a sentence… Don't do it.
As a funny hack you could try naming your file with the text you want and read the URL of the SWF thus showing it's name and using it as a text data. But don't do it :)^
If you want to try it, you can access the URL with stage.loaderInfo.url, just make sure you have a stage defined - call in the document class or after the display object you're calling from is added to stage.
Use ExternalInterface to communicate with, for example, JavaScript and get the variables from JavaScript. It's actually not so bad, since your text will be tidily stored in a .js file and you can modify it on the run. That of course is a separate file and you need to have the SWF embedded in HTML for that, but it is one of the options you have.
Other than that you could have an external file that will hold the data and embed it in the SWF. Look more on embedding here: http://flashgamedojo.com/wiki/index.php?title=Embedding_XML_in_AS3 . It is about embedding XML data, but you can use the technique for any data, even binary.
Embedding data is a great thing, but you'll need to re-compile each time you make a change in the file, since it isn't loading the file dynamically, but embeds it into to the SWF itself on compile time.
Hope that helps!
JPEXS Decompiler can change text in an SWF pretty easily. It's still actively developed as of 2021.
Related
I'm passing text to an SWF file via the FlashVars parameter in the HTML object. This is working fine and I can see the new text in my SWF in the browser.
What I'd like to be able to achieve now is for the user to be able to click a "Download" button which saves the SWF that's currently displaying the dynamic text.
Is the possible or is there an alternative way of passing text to an SWF via the browser and then saving that SWF with the next text "compiled" inside it.
Thanks,
An SWF is compiled code. Your FlashVars are runtime variables that are read into the compiled program. The short answer is, "No". What you're trying to do isn't possible. The SWF will always need to read into itself those variables, and storing them in the SWF isn't the way.
Because the SWF will need to load your data after it opens, the only question is "where to store them?"
If the data is specific to an individual's computer, try SharedObject.
If the data is general to all users, you could host the data on your site, and the app loads the file using URLLoader with XML/JSON/TXT.
If the data is dynamic for each user and needs to run offline, have your website write the XML/JSON/TXT and zip it and your SWF into a single download.
It seems as though every actionscript file (not custom ones) is automatically included when coding in the timeline's actions, so I'm wondering if it's necessary to import the files through the code. Are there any advantages? Can I prevent flash from importing every file to reduce the size of my flash application (SWF)?.
For example, I don't need to import MovieClip to use the MovieClip class in timeline actions.
You can indeed load external assets, that is, anything of SWF, MP3, WAV, JPG or any byte sequence you have a decoder for, then parse it via code, then use in your Flash app. The advantages are flexibility, for example, if a user has all sounds turned off, you are free to not load large music for him thus saving him some traffic - this might be crucial for some people out there. There are also disadvantages, because the files (assets) in SWF are available from the start of your app, and because the connection can get lost at any moment, you might not receive your external files in time for the app to use, or not receive them at all.
Not importing in order to reduce the SWF size? I'd say reduce the size or quality of those assets instead. The actual mess with Loaders is something you should avoid unless you have dynamic downloadable content (some extra levels' metadata maybe) which you plan to generate on a timely basis in order to attract longer attention to your app.
In short, all static content is better embedded, all dynamic content should be loaded afterwards.
Compiling FLA file doesn't embed every AS file in the resulting SWF. My test directory structure.
Work Directory
file.fla
ClassA.as
ClassB.as
The code on my timeline.
var a:ClassA = new ClassA();
The resulting SWF only contain the ClassA.
For multiple SWF files with code, every SWF embed the class. It's your job to tell the compiler.
If you are using FLEXSDK, you can look to these parameters.
-link-report file.xml : Generate a file containing all AS file include at compilation.
-load-externs file.xml : Exclude all class containt in the file.
If you are using Adobe Flash exclude class article
I have a swf file (game file) which reads the content of external text file which I have created. This swf file will not be used in any browser. It's for windows only. I was wondering if I can delete or update that text file after I read it's content without using air.
Your question isn't very clear, I'm not sure what exactly you wanted to know. But if I understood you correctly:
You cannot delete files from the filesystem in the through Flash Player, but you can however delete it from SWF file's memory.
Deleting from the file system (basically like putting into trash) is something that only AIR can help you with.
Deleting from memory would mean to remove all the listeners from URLLoader or Loader object instance and setting it to null.
You cannot write the file with Flash player to edit it's content (update), but you can load it again and check if anything changed in that file's content that also would be considered as updating.
Hope that answers your question.
you cant do that without air. but you can use an external application using fscommand().
or you can use Multimedia Zinc
I want to know how to load external class files(.as files) in actionscript but don't have to know the class file's name. Think of it like loading mods in minecraft with forge mod loader, it doesn't know the main class of the mod's file name, yet it successfully loads the mod. I want to know if something like this is possible in actionscript 3.0 because I feel like making a tower defense game that isn't like the others out there but have it so it can be modded and have mods loaded but of course I have to load the class file without knowing the class file's name.
Note: I don't got access to Adobe Air so I can't use anything that requires Adobe Air.
You want to load a particular .as file AFTER or BEFORE compilation? After the compilation it is hardly possible - the file would not be compiled and therefore it would be useless. Why don't you use a swf or some kind of XML/JSON with settings in that case? Before the compilation you would still need to identify it by it's package name/name.
Basically, you want a plugin management system.
In AS3, it is not possible to "load" a .as file on execution, because it is a (uncompiled) source file. But, it is possible to load another swf and to use the classes within it.
Your process should probably be something like this :
Get a list of the plugins/addons. If you were using AIR, it would have been possible by browsing the content of a folder. Since you're not, you'll probably need to use a listing file (basically, a file that say "Here's the list&path of the plugins you need to load".
Load each swf file
(possibly) call a initialization method for each plugin.
You may wish to look into the way OSMF manages plugins, for example : http://osmf.org/dev/osmf/OtherPDFs/osmf_plugin_dev_guide.pdf
Is there any method in as3 that flash can write file's last modified date.
Its stand alone flash application which had external swf loading. I want to check the last modified date of the swf during the loading.
please suggest any possible methods.
Thanks.
In AIR, there is File class with modificationDate property. But in plain AS3, there's no file concept at all. If you loading swf with Loader, you only get data, but not the attributes of file (and file might not exist at all if loading something by URL.)