Character array type conversion problem

Question

Hi, I'm using BlazeDS (v3.0.0.544) to remotely call Java code on the server from my Flex client. I'm having trouble when converting a character array type from Java to ActionScript and vice-versa. In my Flex code, if the ActionScript class uses a String type to map to the char[] then the char[] is successfully converted from Java to ActionScript, but not from ActionScript to Java.
// Extract from ActionScript code
private var m_charArray:String;
public function get charArray():String
return m_charArray;
public function set charArray(value1:String):void
m_charArray = value1;
Alternatively, if my ActionScript class uses an Array type then I can successfully send data from the client and populate a char[] field on the server, but can't send an updated char[] back to my ActionScript class.
In fact the Flex console reports:
TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert "myString" to Array.
The code this time:
// Extract from ActionScript code
private var m_charArray:Array;
public function get charArray():Array
return m_charArray;
public function set charArray(value1:Array):void
m_charArray = value1;
All the other types I have tried work successfully, it's only with char arrays that I've hit a problem.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Graeme,
It is how it works. I can see the inconsistency. You can find an example how of echo char[] in blazeds\trunk\qa\apps\qa-regress\testsuites\mxunit\tests\remotingService\dataTypes\CharTy pesTest.mxml. It echos a char[] in return of a string. You can get the char in a string easily string.charAt() and get its length using length(). I think it may be the reason remoting decided to use a string to represent a char[] instead of a generic objects array. It should be more memory efficient. However, I can see that it can turn into problem as what you descibed. When the data has to send back to server, it has to convert back to array. If the char[] type is used inside an object, it is impossible to do the conversion unless the getter and setter are generic
public function get charArray():Object
return m_charArray;
public function set charArray(value1:Object):void
if (value1 is String)
m_charArray = new Array();
//copy the string elements to it
else
m_charArray = value1;
I know it is ugly, but it the only work around I can think of. I think it needs to log a bug to correct this conversion behavior
William