Having trouble with ExternalInterface.call

programming flash
1

Yeah I know…it’s so simple to use, how the hell could I mess this up right? Long story short, a flash game was developed and passed along to the ‘server guys’ to implement on our backend. Problem is, all the information gathered within the game (email addresses, user name, yadda yadda) are contained within the game only and haven’t been passed anywhere.

I looked into passing the variables from Flash 8 -> Javascript using the ExternalInterface API and it seems straightforward enough but I still can’t get it working. I was hoping someone might shed some light onto the matter.

First, on the second line of the main ‘actions’ frame I imported the externalinterface class :

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

I also have a Web document named ‘form.cfm’ which is supposed to display the flash movie and contains a JS function which is simply supposed to display the ‘name’ variable passed to it from Flash :

 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Match &amp; Go Game</title>
**<script language="javascript">**
**// This function "parseArrayData" will be called from ActionScript**
**function parseArrayData(name)**
**{**
**alert("hello "+ name);**
**}**
**</script>**
<style>
body{
margin:0;
background-image:url(assets/images/bgHtml.jpg);
background-repeat:repeat-x;
}
.game{
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
width:750px;
text-align:center;
}
.spacing{
padding:5px;
}
.subText{
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,Verdana;
font-size:10px;
color:#505050;
}
a{
color:#006699;
text-decoration:underline;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="game">
  <script type="text/javascript" src="flashobject.js"></script>
<div id="flashcontent" style="width: 750px; height: 525px"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var fo = new FlashObject("matchGoGame_e.swf", "matchGoGame", "750", "525", "8", "#FFFFFF");
fo.addParam("allowScriptAccess", "sameDomain");
fo.addParam("quality", "high");
fo.addParam("scale", "noscale");
fo.addParam("loop", "false");
fo.write("flashcontent");
</script><img src="assets/images/t_slogan_e.gif" class="spacing"/><br />
<img src="assets/images/ext_horStroke.gif" width="100%" height="15" /><br />
<img src="assets/images/ext_horStroke.gif" width="100%" height="15" />
</div>
</body>
</html>

Here is the button on(release) code for Flash :

on(release){
 var error:Boolean = false;
 var errorMessages:String = "";
 if(userName.input_txt.text == ""){
  errorMessages = errorMessages+"Username is a required field
";
  error = true;
 }
 
 if(userPostalcode.input_txt.text == ""){
  errorMessages = errorMessages+"Postal Code is a required field
";
  error = true;
 }
 
 if(userEmail.input_txt.text == ""){
  errorMessages = errorMessages+"Email is a required field
";
  error = true;
 }
 
 if(error){
  trace(errorMessages);
 }
 else{
  _parent.userInfo = new Array();
  _parent.userInfo.push(userName.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(userPostalcode.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(userEmail.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(directMail.value);
  _parent.userInfo.push(friend1.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(friend2.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(friend3.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(friend4.input_txt.text);
  _parent.userInfo.push(friend5.input_txt.text);
  trace(_parent.userInfo);
**ExternalInterface.call("parseArrayData", userName.input_txt.text);**
 }
}

When I click the ‘submit’ button, nothing happens. This was dropped in my lap about a half an hour ago and it would seem that the ‘ball is in my court’ so to speak. Any help would be much appreciated.