Loading External Files

Remarks#

There are some cases where your application cannot manipulate the contents of assets loaded from an external resource (e.g. transform images). I can’t remember for certain what they are, but I am fairly sure it’s related to cross domain content loading.

Loading External Images/SWFs With The Loader

1. Create a Loader object:

   var loader:Loader = new Loader();   //import 

2. Add listeners on the loader. Standard ones are complete and io/security errors

   loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loadComplete); //when the loader is done loading, call this function
   loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, loadIOError); //if the file isn't found
   loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR, loadSecurityError); //if the file isn't allowed to be loaded

3. Load the desired file:

    loader.load(new URLRequest("image.png"));

4. Create Your Event Handlers:

    function loadComplete(e:Event):void {
        //load complete
        //the loader is actually a display object itself, so you can just add it to the display list
        addChild(loader) 
        //or addChild(loader.content) to add the root content of what was loaded;
    }
        
    function loadIOError(e:IOErrorEvent):void {
        //the file failed to load, 
    }
       
    function loadSecurityError(e:SecurityError):void {
        //the file wasn't allowed to load
    }

Loading with the Loader class is asynchronous. This means after you call loader.load the application will continue running while the file loads. Your loader content isn’t available until the loader dispatches the Event.COMPLETE event.

imports needed:

import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.IOErrorEvent;
import flash.events.SecurityErrorEvent;
import flash.net.URLRequest;

Loading a text file with FileStream (AIR runtime only)

A simple example on how to read a UTF text file synchronously.

import flash.filesystem.File;
import flash.filesystem.FileMode;
import flash.filesystem.FileStream;

//First, get a reference to the file you want to load
var myFile:File = File.documentsDirectory.resolvePath("lifestory.txt");

//Create a FileStream object
fileStream = new FileStream(); 

//open the file
fileStream.open(myFile, FileMode.READ);

//read the data and assign it to a local variable
var fileText:String = fileStream.readUTF();

//close the current filestream
fileStream.close();