AIR and fscommand

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10-14-2009, 04:02 AM
ImprisonedPride

CS4/AS3/AIR and fscommand

Is there a fix for this problem yet? I've literally been searching for the entire day. I'm writing a home theater application and I need AIR's fileSystem package to read/write date to the library, but I also need a way to launch each video file. Launching them with a specified player would be a bonus. I've checked all the release notes I could for AIR since version 1.0 and I don't see any solutions. Does anyone have any up-to-date information about this? All the threads I've read have suggested things like CommandProxy and Shu-Player and Flash-Jester, but I need something solid that's -going- to work with CS4/AS3/AIR to let me launch video files. Thanks.
10-14-2009, 12:35 PM
Northcode

You can't use fscommand EXEC from AIR so there's no way to launch an external application like you can from Flash and Flex. This will be addressed in AIR 2.0 according to information recently revealed at MAX. You will require some outside assistance to make this work today. That means an external application listening on a socket or a personal web server or an AIR wrapper application although Mike Chambers has already condemned this practice.
10-14-2009, 02:18 PM
ImprisonedPride

Quote:

Originally Posted by Northcode

That means an external application listening on a socket...

Do you have an example of what you mean by this? When is AIR 2.0 scheduled for release?
10-14-2009, 05:38 PM
Northcode

This was mentioned either in one of the MAX talks or at FOTB

Quote:

We expect to ship a beta version of Adobe AIR 2 on Adobe Labs by the end of the year. In the first half of 2010, we expect to ship the final version of AIR 2

You would have to set up a socket server that ran locally before your AIR app started and then you would use the XMLSocket object to pass data to (or get data from) the external application.

See http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/a...ionary860.html for more details.
10-14-2009, 08:15 PM
ImprisonedPride

There's really no other way to do it? That's bad news for my client. So how do I move forward from here? I have little experience with socket servers and this one would only need to run locally. What I had originally intended was to use the AIR fileSystem and write a custom batch file to launch the video file, then delete the batch file after it runs. Do you have any pointers you could give me as to where I might get started?
10-14-2009, 09:27 PM
ImprisonedPride

I guess I've found a theoretical solution. I'll basically just create a local java socket server and pass the file name of the video from flash to the server which will launch it. I'll probably use an AutoHotKey script to launch/close both applications if either should be closed prematurely.