Intro to Flashvars | Passing variables to actionscript from the html embed

Intro to Flashvars | Passing variables to actionscript from the html embed | Tutorial

May 22, 2008 • 8,010 views

I’ve had a couple special requests to explain flashvars and how to use it and show it in action.

Overview

The property “FlashVars” can be used to import root level variables to the flash movie or swf. The flashvars propery is used in codes for embedding flash in the html page. The string of variables passed in as flashvars, will be imported into the top level of the movie when it is first instantiated. Variables are created before the first frame of the SWF is played. The format of the string is a set of name=value combinations separated by ampersand (&) symbols.

Steps

Include the flashvars property in your embed codes and voila! You have these variables to use in your swf.
That’s the one step

Code

HTML Embed Codes

Here's some sample embed codes, including object and embed tags:
<object width="540" height="240" title="sample">
  <param name="movie" value="flashvarsTutorial.swf" />
  <param name="flashvars" value="var1=here&var2=are&var3=my&var4=flashvars" />
  <embed src="flashvarsTutorial.swf" flashvars="var1=here&var2=are&var3=my&var4=flashvars" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="540" height="240" ></embed>
</object>

Actionscript using flashvars

//flashvars="var1=val1&var2=val2&var3=val3";
 
display("var1 = "+ var1);
 
display("var2 = "+ var2);
 
display("var3 = "+ var3);
 
display("var4 = "+ var4);
 
function display(todisplay:String){
  feedback.text += todisplay+"\n";
  trace(todisplay);
}

Example

Page 1 (var1=val1&var2=val2&var3=val3)
Page 2 (var1=here&var2=are&var3=my&var4=flashvars)

Source

Download the html files and the fla and swf in this flashvars.zip

Categories: tutorial
Tags: actionscript, as2, download, flash, html, open source, tutorial

3 Responses to “ Intro to Flashvars | Passing variables to actionscript from the html embed | Tutorial ”

Inder Singh Aug 7th, 2008 at 7:39 am

Hey.

Nice example for start..!

You have managed your blog very well
pedro Aug 22nd, 2008 at 3:37 am

Hello, I have the files and everything and i was testing around with the fla file and the html page so it will only show up var 1 and 2 but even tho when i take them out of the fla and html page var 3 and var 4 they still show up and say undefined on it.. help?
Jason Min Nov 24th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

If you use CS3 and publish html, you need to add
In the AC_FL_RunContent code the following:

‘FlashVars’, ‘var1=val1&var2=val2&var3=val3′