Problems calling context-sensitive AIRHelp from Adobe Flex App

Question

Hi everyone...
I´m having problems calling context-sesitive AIRHelp from Flex.
I can launch the help from flex using the following code (flex), but allways starts on the default topic.
private function invocarAirHelp(tema:String):void {
      var appID:String = "pc1";
      var pubID:String = "8C47FDE4638CAF7F210634E52A5F8318D893A57C.1";
      var mgr:ProductManager = new ProductManager("airappinstaller");               
      mgr.launch("-launch " + appID + " " + pubID);
the launch method can recive parameters after the publisherID, but i dont know the parameters that i should give to the method to start the AIRHelp on an specific topic.
I tryed using the parameters as the call was on the command line, ex:
  mgr.launch("-launch " + appID + " " + pubID + " -csh mapnumber 12");
but i can get any results... with those parameters the help application doesn´t even start
Anyone have an idea to make this works?
Thanks in advance, Sabin

Answer 1

Hi Sabin,
The only supported way to launch AIR applications from the browser is the air "browser API": http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=distributing_apps_3.html#1035834
The browser API uses ProductManager internally and exposes higher-level browser API so that we change the implementation if necessary someday. The browser API will stay the same, even if the interactions through ProductManager (or something else) change.
The browser API (air.swf) has other features that make it the preferred way to launch apps. For instance, it provides accurate information about which platforms support AIR, and can therefore manage install of new apps and of the runtime itself.
Also, if the application is not installed then Browser API will return Error to the flex application, but that does not happen in case of ProductManager.
That said, you can probably use "--" to separate arguments intended for airappinstaller from arguments that should be passed through to the app itself. 
mgr.launch("-launch " + appID + " " + pubID + " -- -csh mapnumber 12");
-Praful Jain