Decode JSON FlashVars in AS3

Question

I'm struggling with passing a JSON object to a .swf via FlashVars and decoding the JSON FlashVars in AS3 and was hoping you could help me.

Problem: I get an JSONParseError: Unexpected o encountered when I try to decode the FlashVars.

Situation:

A PHP function creates paths to images from a hash and puts them together in this JSON object:

[{"index":"0", "path":"image1", "ext":"jpg"},
{"index":"1", "path":"image2", "ext":"jpg"},
{"index":"2", "path":"image3", "ext":"jpg"}]

This JSON is passed to .swf via Flashvars. In the HTML I have this:

<param name="FlashVars" value='[{"index":"0", "path":"image1", "ext":"jpg"},{"index":"1", "path":"image2", "ext":"jpg"},{"index":"2", "path":"image3", "ext":"jpg"}]'/>

The PHP function and the .swf are in the same folder on the webspace

Then I try to decode the FlashVars in my main.as file with this AS3 Code (as3corelib is imported):

var imagePaths:Object;    
try {

    var paramObj:Object = LoaderInfo(this.root.loaderInfo).parameters;
    trace(paramObj.toString());
    if(paramObj){
        imagePaths = JSON.decode(paramObj.toString());
    }
}
catch (error:Error)
        {
            trace(error.toString());
        }

"imagePaths" holds the JSON object so later the paths to the images could be constructed. As far as I understood JSON.decode returns an This worked fine when I loaded the exactly same JSON on localhost from a separate txt file with:

var imagePathLoader:URLLoader = URLLoader(e.target);
imagePaths = JSON.decode(imagePathLoader.data);

The error obviously occurs in the try block, so I traced the paramObj variable with trace(paramObj.toString()); and get [object Object]as output. It seems to me that the JSON decode function is trying to decode the string [object Object] rather than the object itself and therefore throws an error at the first "o" of "object"?

I already tried to urlencode() the JSON from PHP before passing as FlashVars, the suggestions found on http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/issues/detail?id=119 and did JSON.decode(paramObj); without .toString() which throws this error:

1118: Implicit coercion of a value with static type Object to a possibly unrelated type String.

So, how do I pass the JSON correctly to the .swf and decode it in AS3 to an object?

Thanks in advance for any help

Answer 1

Thanks for the replies..I also found this out yesterday but couldn't answer my own question for 8h (new user..). What I did: In the HTML file that embeds the swf:

<param name="FlashVars" value="var=urlencode([{"index":"0", "path":"image1", "ext":"jpg"},
{"index":"1", "path":"image2", "ext":"jpg"},
{"index":"2", "path":"image3", "ext":"jpg"}])"/>

then in the AS3 code I accessed the FlashVars with:

var imagePaths:Object;    
var paramObj:Object = LoaderInfo(this.root.loaderInfo).parameters;
var myFlashVar:String;
var varName:String;
for (varName in paramObj) {
    myFlashVar = String(paramObj[varName]);
}
imagePaths = JSON.decode(myFlashVar);

then processed the JSON object as usual..thanks for your help!