Actionscript 3 – posting XML data with URLLoader | Thoughts from Mads Sülau Jørgensen

So, you want to POST some XML data to a web service.

Let’s for the fun of it say, that we would like to POST the following piece of XML to a PHP script:

1	<request command="run-command" />

Now, the way I’d do that in Actionscript 3, is like this:

var a:XML = <request command="run-command" />;
var r:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://localhost/service.php");
 
r.data = a;
r.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
r.contentType = "text/xml";
 
var l:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
l.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, function(e:Event) {
    trace("success", l.data);
});
l.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, function(e:Event) {
    trace("failed", e);
});
l.load(r);

But it seems, that older flash players (<= 9,0,45,0) does not call the XML’s toString() or something. The result is, that the URLLoader makes a GET request, which is a bit hard to debug as version 9,0,115,0 does send the XML correctly.

Anyway, the correct way to do it, seems to be to manually call the XML’s .toXMLString() method, like so:

var a:XML = <request command="run-command" />;
var r:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://localhost/service.php");
 
r.data = a.toXMLString();
r.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
r.contentType = "text/xml";
 
var l:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
l.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, function(e:Event) {
    trace("success", l.data);
});
l.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, function(e:Event) {
    trace("failed", e);
});
l.load(r);

2 thoughts on “Actionscript 3 – posting XML data with URLLoader”

Danilo on February 1, 2009 at 11:38 said:

Thank you! Realy helped me out!!!
Reply ↓
Niklas on November 13, 2009 at 12:03 said:

Jeg kunne godt tænke mig et php script hvor jeg kunne rette i min xml :P
Reply ↓

Thoughts from Mads Sülau Jørgensen

Various articles about programming and systems administration.

Actionscript 3 – posting XML data with URLLoader

2 thoughts on “Actionscript 3 – posting XML data with URLLoader”

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