Flex FileReference Download error: #2167

22.04.2010

POSTED IN Programming

Its quite hard to believe that such a simple thing – download a file from server in flex is such a pain!

The code was very simple, from the manual and example:

var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference();
fileRef.download(new URLRequest("myFile.txt"), "myFile.txt");

But in real world, there are things that they didn’t tell unless you hit it!
From flash player 10, all uploads/downloads in fileRef won’t allowed seamlessly. It require user to click a button or hotkey to invoke upload/download action. Otherwise it will give you an error #2167. This isn’t difficult to resolve if it’s not too much of a pain for your user to click a button one more time.

Alert.show("Click OK to download.",null,4,null,startDownload);
 
function startDownload():void{
		var fileRef:FileReference;
		fileRef = new FileReference();
		const FILE_URL:String = "myTextFile.txt";
		urlReq = new URLRequest(FILE_URL);
		urlReq.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
		try
			{
				fileRef.download(urlReq);
			}
			catch (error:Error)
			{
				Alert.show(error.message);
			}
	}
}

I thought this could work, not until I found that my previous post… you need to define the fileReference outside of the function… otherwise it won’t!
Finally… this would work:

var fileRef:FileReference;
fileRef = new FileReference();
Alert.show("Click OK to download.",null,4,null,startDownload);
function startDownload():void{
 
		const FILE_URL:String = "myTextFile.txt";
		urlReq = new URLRequest(FILE_URL);
		urlReq.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
		try
			{
				fileRef.download(urlReq);
			}
			catch (error:Error)
			{
				Alert.show(error.message);
			}
 
}