What if you’d like to pass an object to Flex

To continue the topic of my previous post I’m just going to add that there’s a native way to pass objects from JavaScript to Flex’s actionscript.

I’m not going to describe how to structure a object in JavaScript and/or Flex. Let’s go directly to the example.

The function in .js file should return something that is object in JavaScript:

.js file

function getObject() {
    return { foo : 'bar', zoo : 'tar' };
}

Now, supposing that in Flex there already has been added a callback with ExternalInterface(‘getObject’, receiveObject); and the as3 function receiveObject looks similar to this:

.mxml or .as

private function receiveObject( obj : Object ) : void
{
    Alert.show(obj.foo);
    Alert.show(obj.zoo);
}

That outputs respectively “bar” and “tar”.

Even more …

You can pass from .js to .as array of objects, but than with small change of the code you’d access the variables:

obj[0].foo
obj[1].foo

assuming that there are two objects with same properties.

Related posts:

1. Tips and tricks in ExternalInterface communication!
2. ExternalInterface from JavaScript to IE/Firefox
3. Storing JavaScript objects in html5 localStorage