Bill Richards » Flash

PHP base_convert() in AS3

Bill — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:10:39 +0000

Here is a quick example of how to use PHP’s base convert function in AS3. A lot of people use this function for shorter masked URLs like YouTube. Easy enough but took me a minute to find the equivalent in actionscript.

PHP:

function encode36($x){
    return base_convert($x, 10, 36);
}
function decode36($x){
    return base_convert($x, 36, 10);
}

Actionscript 3:

function encode36(x:Number):String{
    return x.toString(36);
}
function decode36(x:String):int {
    return parseInt(x,36);
}

Error calling method on NPObject!

Bill — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:56:41 +0000

Have you seen this error? If you work with Flash actionscript and Javascript, you probably have. It can be pretty frustrating the first time you see this error since it’s not very informative. In my experience, this happened when I was trying to communicate with actionscript via Javascript using ExternalInterface call. The problem was sure enough a security issue with Flash. The solution for “Error calling method on NPObject!” is to add:

System.security.allowDomain("mydomain.com");

Add this to the Flash file you’re communicating with. Keep in mind that www.mydomain.com is different from mydomain.com to Flash.

Lighttpd, Flash and Crossdomain.xml

Bill — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:39:11 +0000

A few weeks back I ran into a rather odd situation when trying to load an xml file via Actionscript across multiple domains. No matter what I did, it would not load! Typical way to resolve this is to put a crossdomain.xml granting access to the swf host location right? Well, if you’re planning on using Lighty, a good thing to keep in mind when installing is to set the proper mimetype.assign options in the configuration file. If you do not set this it will default to “application/octet-stream” which for some reason Flash (actionscript) does NOT like and will ignore crossdomain.xml. I know it’s kind of a newbie mistake but I’m sure one of you will come across the same issue when using it for the first time like I did.