loadVariables()

Availability

Flash Player 4; behavior changed in Flash Player 7.

Usage

loadVariables ("url" , target [, variables])

Parameters

url An absolute or relative URL where the variables are located. If the SWF file issuing this call is running in a web browser, url must be in the same domain as the SWF file; for details, see "Description," below.

target The target path to a movie clip that receives the loaded variables.

variables An optional parameter specifying an HTTP method for sending variables. The parameter must be the string GET or POST. If there are no variables to be sent, omit this parameter. The GET method appends the variables to the end of the URL and is used for small numbers of variables. The POST method sends the variables in a separate HTTP header and is used for long strings of variables.

Returns

Nothing.

Description

Function; reads data from an external file, such as a text file or text generated by a CGI script, Active Server Pages (ASP), or PHP, or Perl script, and sets the values for variables in a target movie clip. This action can also be used to update variables in the active SWF file with new values.

The text at the specified URL must be in the standard MIME format application/x-www-form-urlencoded (a standard format used by CGI scripts). Any number of variables can be specified. For example, the following phrase defines several variables:

company=Macromedia&address=600+Townsend&city=San+Francisco&zip=94103

In SWF files running in a version of the player earlier than Flash Player 7, url must be in the same superdomain as the SWF file that is issuing this call. For example, a SWF file at www.someDomain.com can load variables from a SWF file at store.someDomain.com, because both files are in the same superdomain of someDomain.com.

In SWF files of any version running in Flash Player 7 or later, url must be in exactly the same domain (see Flash Player security features). For example, a SWF file at www.someDomain.com can load variables only from SWF files that are also at www.someDomain.com. If you want to load variables from a different domain, you can place a cross-domain policy file on the server hosting the SWF file that is being accessed. For more information, see About allowing cross-domain data loading.

If you want to load variables into a specific level, use loadVariablesNum() instead of loadVariables().

Example

This example loads information from a text file into text fields into the varTarget movie clip on the main Timeline. The variable names of the text fields must match the variable names in the data.txt file.

on(release) {
  loadVariables("data.txt", "_root.varTarget");
}