Actionscript Javascript Communication | ExternalInterface call and addCallback Tutorial

Good Question, half of this works in IE…
You can communicate from flash to javascript just fine. But getting from the javascript to the flash is giving me trouble. I get the “Object doesn’t support this property of method” error.

Any insight would be helpful!

hav a flv fullscreen player,inside a html page,

in that html page one button is there,

that button should be invisible until

user click & watch half of the flv movie,

after watching that half of the movie,
that html button should be automatically active,

any idea how to do this type of thing

using javascript in flash

plz mAIL ME AT neeraj8585@gmail.com

hii Evan Mullins

thanks for ur reply,

i am able to trace the flv cue points,but getiing confusion in calling that function,can u help me to calling that function, just tell how do i call that function from flash to hide that html button in start & when it will reach to that particular point that html button will automatically shown, it will be very helpful for me.

////////////////////////////////////////////////
import flash.external.*;

// for calling javascript external class

// plaese writr that function here that all

/**
Requires:
– FLVPlayback component on the Stage with an instance name of my_FLVPlybk
– TextArea component on the Stage with an instance name of my_ta
*/

import mx.video.*;
my_FLVPlybk.contentPath = “http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/video/water.flv”;
my_ta.visible = false;
// create cue point object
var cuePt:Object = new Object();//create cue point object
cuePt.time = 1.444;
cuePt.name = “elapsed_time”;
cuePt.type = “actionscript”;
my_FLVPlybk.addASCuePoint(cuePt);//add AS cue point
// add 2nd AS cue point using time and name parameters
my_FLVPlybk.addASCuePoint(5.3, “elapsed_time2″);
var listenerObject:Object = new Object();
listenerObject.cuePoint = function(eventObject:Object):Void {
my_ta.text = “Cue at: ” + eventObject.info.time + ” occurred” ;
my_ta.visible = true;
};
my_FLVPlybk.addEventListener(“cuePoint”, listenerObject);
///////////// script end ///////////////////////

regards,
Neeraj

hi

The sample is nice and I changed the code to work in IE also ……the code

change the html code as follows………..

in javascript change like this

if (navigator.appName.indexOf(“Microsoft”) != -1)
{
document.getElementById(‘IEflash’).sendTextFromHtml(document.getElementById(‘htmlText’).value);
} else
{ document.getElementById(‘flash’).sendTextFromHtml(document.getElementById(‘htmlText’).value);
}
document.getElementById(“htmlText”).value = “”;

I hope this may help for some one………

With ExternalInterface.call, the first argument is the name of the js function you want to call in your HTML document, and the rest are arguments you want to pass in to it. You can send many, just separate them with a comma.
so: ExternalInterface.call(“recieveTextFromFlash”, _root.theText.text);
becomes: ExternalInterface.call(“recieveTextFromFlash”, _root.theText2.text, _root.theText.text, _root.theText3.text);
Check the documentation of ExternalInterface.call from Adobe
call (ExternalInterface.call method)
public static call(methodName:String, [parameter1:Object]) : Object
Parameters

methodName:String – The name of the function to call in the container. If the function accepts parameters, they must appear following the methodName parameter.

parameter1:Object [optional] – Any parameters to be passed to the function. You can specify zero or more parameters, separating them by commas. The parameters can be of any ActionScript data type. When the call is to a JavaScript function, the ActionScript types are automatically marshalled into JavaScript types. When the call is to some other ActiveX container, the parameters are encoded in the request message.
Returns

Object – The response received from the container. If the call failed (for example if there is no such function in the container, or the interface was not available, or a recursion occurred, or there was a security issue) null is returned.

I’ve got the html/javascript submitting multiple inputs but it’s the actionscript side that I am completely clueless about.

thanks,this help me a lot

Hi saga …

Can you explain where the IEFlash object is coming from on your fix for IE …

is the object embedded in a different way to flash ???

Thanks …

Can anybody help me. I need to Get value from flash to js by calling js method.

Thanks for the comments everyone, I took a minute recently and worked with this IE issue. I tried saga’s suggestion, but it didn’t seem complete. Then I decided to update my embed codes, and I used my favorite embed option swfobject2! Doing this alone fixed the IE bug! Now we have actionscript javascript communication in any browser, IE included.
NEW live example with swfobject2 works in IE! ActionscriptJavascriptCommunication2.html

@Roland – to do that, if I understand your question correctly, you’d have to just expose an actionscript function to javascript with addCallback and have it return the value you need and call that from javascript like any other function. Good luck!

Evan – You said you fixed the codecs for that IE problem….did oyu update the zip file with that change ?

Wonderful…Thank you Evan for your quick reply…this helps me a lot..let me try tonight..

Do you know if this also works with AC_RunActiveContent.js. I tried using swfobject and it blows my design apart.

thanks

Hi, is there a fairly easy way to get the text sent from flash
to simply send the text as a javascript call to the web page?

I’m fairly green & it would help with my learning.
Thanks
motu

Is it as simple to set a cue point in a video and pass a ? variable?

I have built many flash players, but honestly I like Jeoring’s player but I would like to load different content into my side column from a database like ads that are relational to the content of the video.

I am currently looking into AMPHP but saw this post. Very informative stuff.

Can you shoot me an email if you respond please?

Hi all,
Very helpful site – thanks for all the effort. I have found an issue with one of your links. For the new swfObject2 example you are pointing to the incorrect location. It should be ‘/wp-content/plugins/wp-swfobject/2.0/swfobject.js’ – you have missed out the ’2.0/’ from the url. This will fix the non-displaying example.

Thanks,

Bob

I can’t get externalInteface to work at all on ie if using Flash player 10 – works ok with other flash players. Anyone know a workaround or what is happening?

Thank, working fine but i want to this sample code :

ExternalInterface.call(”

function anyFunction(blah) {
blah;
blah;
blah;
return blah;
}

“);

Can anyone help me?

Thanks again!

Hey Evan, could you please explain what code the swfobject.js file contains. I’m confused about this.

I downloaded the swfobject and copied the example code exactly as it was, accept for the location of swfobject.js, into the source code download html page. When I tested it, it wasn’t sending text either way for some reason. But when I view the example page that’s online here, it works perfectly. I can’t tell what I might be doing wrong. Do you know what might be going wrong?
I’m using firefox3.6 btw.

Thanks!

None of the examples you’ve provided is working in IE8, it only works from AS to JS but not the other way, why? is there a fix for this?

thank you thank you thank you ! =)

haha … loved the comment
“hi,
great sollution, but in does it also works in IE ?”

… probably not but it’s IE

hi Evan,

Thanks for the great tutorial

cheer

Hi Evan,

I am using the same code and trying it on chrome/firefox it is not working on neither of the browsers, can you explain why it doesn’t work on this.

Also I am trying to call a method defined in actionscript from javascript but gives an error in the browser saying “method not defined” and also am not able to call method defined in javascript from actionscript.