PHP and Actionscript 3.0 issue

Question

Hi,
I have a MySql database with some content that I want to
access from my Flash movie through a PHP script. I actually get
things to work (sort of) since I can pass content from the
database, through the PHP script into my Flash movie - but the
problem is the formatting of the content being sent to Flash. The
string that I want to send is written in PHP (UTF-8 encoded) as
follows:
---PHP---
$file_list = array();
array_push($file_list, "å");
array_push($file_list, "ä");
$temp= implode(",",$file_list);
print_r("arrayen=$temp");
What I do (in this simplyfied example) is to create an array
and populate it with the Swedish letters 'å' and 'ä'.
These are just placeholders of course and are in my actual code
retrieved from my database.
So, "arrayen=$temp" is sent to my Flashfile, where the code
looks as follows:
---Flash AS 3.0---
var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
var vrequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest();
vrequest.url = "retrieveData.php";
vrequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
vrequest.data = variables;
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.TEXT;
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandler);
try {
loader.load(vrequest);
} catch (error:Error) {
trace("Unable to load URL");
function completeHandler(event:Event):void {
var loader2:URLLoader = URLLoader(event.target);
var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables(loader2.data);
trace(variables);
The outcome of the last 'trace' should be something like
"arrayen=å,ä"
but unfortunately it comes out as:
%0A%0A%0Aarrayen=%C3%A5%2C%C3%A4%2C%C3%A5%2C%C3%A4%2C%C3%A5%2C%C3%A4%2C%C3%A5%2C%C3%A4%20% 0A%0A%0A%0A
OK, I believe my problem is obvious - how on earth do I get
it right?
Thanks a milion in advance!
.cristian

Answer 1

Hi, and thanks for your reply.
Actually, I think I got it to work in a pretty strange way...
There was something dodgy happening in the PHP script,
something indicated by others in different forums (see some of the
comments further down on:
http://se.php.net/urlencode).
I read somewhere that PHP had an issue with urlencoding and one
solution was to urlencode twice. Having done that, things started
to happen on the Flash side, but there was still some strange
formatting going on. Eventually I solved it by changing my
flash_encode() to:
PHP Code:
// --------------------------------------------------- ENCODE
FOR FLASH
function flash_encode ($input) {
return rawurlencode(rawurlencode(($input)));
That is, using 'rawurlencode()' and no utf8_decode().
In my Flash file I then simply had to unescape twice:
AS Code:
function completeHandler(event:Event):void {
var loader2:URLLoader = URLLoader(event.target);
loader2.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;
var variables2:URLVariables = new
URLVariables(loader2.data);
var temp:String = String(variables2);
trace(temp); // just to check the "raw" data
var temp2 = unescape(temp);
var temp3 = unescape(temp2);
trace(temp3);
The output is now as expected!
Please note that I am not very skilled in programming so if
anyone has a better solution please submit it. I'll use this for
now though
.c