Filereference class

The workflow is relative simple: you create a filereference class, call the browse and upload methods and add listener for events while file upload. If all goes fine, you will receive an onComplete event, if not, different errors events. Let's summarize methods and events the class as you can find in ActionScript dictionary:

Method summary

Event summary

Simple upload

Here's an excerpt of the file upload process:

    //Allow this domain
System.security.allowDomain("http://localhost", "127.0.0.1");
import flash.net.FileReference;

// The listener object listens for FileReference events.
var listener:Object = new Object();

listener.onSelect = function(selectedFile:FileReference):Void {
  statusArea.text += "Attempting to upload " + selectedFile.name + "\n";
  selectedFile.upload("http://localhost/upload/upload.php");
};

// the file is starting to upload.
listener.onOpen = function(selectedFile:FileReference):Void {
  statusArea.text += "Uploading " + selectedFile.name + "\n";
};
listener.onHTTPError = function(file:FileReference, httpError:Number):Void {
    imagePane.contentPath = "error";
    imagePane.content.errorMSG.text = "HTTPError number: "+httpError +"\nFile: "+ file.name;
}

listener.onIOError = function(file:FileReference):Void {
    imagePane.contentPath = "error";
    imagePane.content.errorMSG.text = "IOError: "+ file.name;
}

listener.onSecurityError = function(file:FileReference, errorString:String):Void {
    imagePane.contentPath = "error";
    imagePane.content.errorMSG.text = "SecurityError: "+SecurityError+"\nFile: "+ file.name;    
}

// the file has uploaded
listener.onComplete = function(selectedFile:FileReference):Void {
  statusArea.text += "Upload finished.\nNow downloading " + selectedFile.name + " to player\n";
  details.text = ""
  for(i in selectedFile) details.text +="<b>"+i+":</b> "+selectedFile[i]+"\n"
  downloadImage(selectedFile.name);
};

var imageFile:FileReference = new FileReference();
imageFile.addListener(listener);

  

At the beginning, we allow the domain (in this case just localhost) trough System Security object to bypass sandbox violation messages (see Flash Player 8 security changes), next we setup some of the available listeners for our imageFile object. The most important are onSelect (a file was selected, so upload it) and onComplete, where the upload finish. The other handlers deals with other possible errors (HTTP, I/O, Security) and shows in the scrollPane we will use to display the loaded image (in the case of failure, of course) An important thing to take into account is the fact that onProgress event just return -1 for file upload, so you can't use a bar progress to know the progress of your uploading.

Note that in the onSelect handler we call the upload process just passing the path to the file in charge of managing the upload, a php file. You can use whatever server side language you want, as far as it can manage uploading. Remember to change path if your path is different.