apache flex - Download a file with Adobe AIR

Question

How do I download a file from the internet in a Flex based AIR application.

I tried using a file with url set to the address, but I got a file does not exist error when I tried to save it. And it is really hard to google for help on this issue.

Answer 1

You want to choose from 2 api combos to accomplish this.

Version 1 is URLLoader and FileStream

Using this combination of class, you would load the file from your server in to air via the URLLoader object. This will download the file in to memory and then notify you when the download is complete. Make sure you initiate the download with a dataFormat of URLLoaderDataFormat.BINARY. You would then initiate a Filestream object and write it out to the disk using writeBytes().

Version 2 is URLStream and FileStream

URLStream is very similar to URLLoader, but instead of waiting for the file to completely download before using the result, data is made available to you during the download. This method works well for large files because you don't have to wait for the full download to start saving it to disk, and you also save on memory since once the player hands it off to you it can release the memory related to that data. YOu would use filestream in exactly the same way, you would just end up doing a writeBytes() on each chunk of the file as it streams in.